A Newtown Barnyard Overtaken By Gardens

By Kaaren Valenta

A row of beehives lines the path that meanders through a meadow at the Beach Barn Farm. At the end of the path, tall Japanese grasses soften the view of the weathered late 19th Century converted barn that is home to Vincent Laurence and his wife Anita.

“When we moved here and told people where we lived, they said ‘oh, yes, the old Beach barn,’ so that is what we decided to name the farm,” Mr Laurence said. “For me, the name also conjures up memories of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, where I have worked and lived.”

Vincent Laurence designs and installs gardens and garden structures –– fences, gates, arbors, trellises, pergolas –– from early spring to late fall. Off-season, he is a freelance garden writer, editor, and photographer. His wife works fulltime for a gardening magazine.

Their three-acre property is both a home and a test site for garden design.

“When we moved here in 1996, we took out almost an acre of trees in the front part of the property and started to plant an orchard,” Mr Laurence said. “This property has great topography. It’s an incredible rolling terrain with big glacial erratics, aesthetically pleasing, not very practical, but it works for someone who wants to do something interesting.”

Interesting is a word that well describes the Beach Barn Farm, where visitors are greeted by Sarita, a baby goat, Emma, a yellow lab, and Becca, an aging sheltie. Behind the 1874 barn is a pale, butter-yellow chicken coop with bright purple doors and deep green trim that houses more than a dozen Aracaunas chickens (which lay green eggs) as well as Polish, Buff Orpington, Black Australorp, Speckled Sussex, Domique, White Leghorn, and Dark Cornish varieties.

 Vincent Laurence took up beekeeping four years ago and currently is vice president of the Backyard Beekeepers Association, which meets in Weston.

“We have three different races [of bees],” he said, “an Italian hybrid, bred down in Texas, called -– interestingly –– ‘All-American’; Buckfast bees, bred originally at Buckfast Abbey in England, but now produced and raised throughout the world –– ours came from Texas;  and, lastly, we have a hive of Russian bees, selected for their hygienic behavior, which helps reduce mite pressure on the colony.”

The centerpiece of the farm is a large kitchen garden, surrounded by flower gardens. “I like to integrate vegetable gardens into ornamental landscapes,” he said. “In Europe, there are kitchen gardens enclosed by walls and flowers. It was pragmatic because they needed food, but they also made them beautiful.  This never really became the style in the United States.”

Vincent Laurence came to garden design in a roundabout way. Originally from Massachusetts, he served in the Marine Corps for four years then worked his way through Vassar College by doing carpentry in the summers. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with a degree in English, and did a postgraduate fellowship in the humanities in Western Europe.

In March of 1990 he joined the Taunton Press staff of Fine Homebuilding magazine in Newtown, later moving to Fine Woodworking magazine, then to Fine Gardening.

“I left in 1998 to go to White Flower Farm in Litchfield where I was product manager and catalog writer for Shepherd’s Garden Seeds,” he said. Two years later he was ready to strike out on his own.

“There are a few things that I think about primarily when I am designing gardens,” Mr Laurence said. “Everyone is too busy these days so gardens should be as low maintenance as possible. I plant shrubs, trees, and perennials that need attention only once or twice a year. People have the perception that gardens are more work than lawn, but a lawn has to be cut every week. A garden requires mulch in the winter, a little pruning in the spring, and enough water.

“I use strictly organic methods, improving the soil’s structure and long-term fertility so that the plants don’t require lots of water, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides down the line,” he said. “An additional benefit of this organic approach is that my gardens are bird- and insect-friendly habitats.”

Gardens should be designed to be seen year-around, he said, with not only flowers, but also contrasting foliage color and texture, berries, and interesting shapes.

 “Gardens should have ‘good bones,’” he said.  “Think foliage, fruit, and form.”

For homeowners who have limited time, Mr Laurence is a proponent of the style called new American gardening, which has gained in popularity in recent years.

“There are bold swashes of color by planting large groups of flowers –– 50 purple cornflowers, 50 black-eyed Susans, 50 Joe Pye weed,” he explained. “Perennials, not bedding plants. It’s a style that actually originated in northern Europe, Germany or Holland, and came to the United States. It’s like modern art –– big, bold strokes on canvas, or in this case on the landscape.”

In front of his chicken yard, for example, facing south is a six-foot-deep border of globe thistle (Echinops ritro), Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia), red and yellow daylily varieties, and a broad edging of Six Hills Giant catnip.

   The 40- by 60-foot kitchen garden, at the heart of all the gardens, is fenced with rot-resistant cedar poles, oak rails, and pales (or pickets) made from recycled wooden pallets. At the center of the north and south faces of the fence are six-foot-wide entrances capped by pairs of oak torii-gate crosspieces; these and the poles are joined by trellising to form arbors for roses and clematis.

  At the south gate, are the barb-wire rose (Rosa sericea omeiensis pteracantha), grown for its translucent red thorns although it does bloom, too, and the Eglantine rose (Rosa eglanteria, grown for its hips, which are prolific, bottle-shaped, and make great jam and jelly). Clematis “Henryi” grows on both sides of the same arbor.

  Beyond the arbor plantings, running the full length of the kitchen garden, is a hedge of “Henry Hudson,” a very fragrant, tough, reblooming (reliably until October) Rosa rugosa hybrid. Growing under, around, and through these roses are hundreds of self-seeded rose campions, and, most years, some sweet peas.

 Across a five-foot-wide grass path is a border –– at least 75 feet long –– of anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum). Young lilacs back this border; clematis are planted next to the lilacs; and variegated Weigelas are used as bookends.

Like the south face of the garden, the other sides also feature ornamental gardens. At the west gate, a four-foot-wide opening with an arbor made of cedar pole uprights and sapling crosspieces, are New Dawn roses, clematis (Comtesse de Bouchaud) and a honeysuckle (Dropmore Scarle). A sea of sedum “Autumn Joy,” eight Japanese tree peonies, oodles of Oriental poppies, a few purple coneflower (Echinacea), are all backed by a gauzy wall of meadow rue (Thalictrum rochebrunianum).

With all the plantings, Vincent Laurence’s first thought is practicality.

 “The chicken yard is a coop with an attached 12-foot yard,” he said. “The chickens produce a very rich soil. Then I move the yard, and I have another good planting area.

“I use lots of native [plants], but also plenty of improved cultivars of these natives, as well as plants with similar requirements from analogous climates [like] Japan, Korea, and north-central Europe,” he said. “The reason I use these plants is the same reason that I use organic methods to improve the soil: the result is a garden that’s not quite, but almost, on autopilot. It will take the coldest winters, endure drought…all with a minimum of attention.” 

Vincent Laurence also gives slide show presentations, “Integrating A Productive Kitchen Garden Into An Ornamental Landscape,” at area garden centers and regional flower shows. For more information, he can be reached at 270-6655 or by emailing beachbarnfarm@mindspring.com.