A Homeowner’s Vision Graces A Historic Property With Landmark Gardens

By Shannon Hicks

When Jean and Lincoln Sander bought the house at 211 Walnut Tree Hill Road in late 2002, he got the antique house he wanted and she had space to establish a new garden. It took a few years before Jean decided to establish a garden, but what she has done with the property in the past five years is nothing short of spectacular.

“When we moved here seven and a half years ago there was nothing, just nothing,” she said this week. “There was a couple of shrubs, dogwoods, and dozens of stick maples. No stone wall, nothing.”

The couple’s home is the circa 1748 Benjamin Curtiss House, Benjamin being the brother of namesake Matthew Curtiss, whose former home at 44 Main Street serves as headquarters for the Newtown Historical Society (of which Mr Sander is a former president).

Jean’s garden, which like any proper garden is now a continuing work-in-progress, is a beautiful sanctuary containing a formal English garden adjacent to the back of the house and its raised patio and a woodland section that offers shady relief and plant forms year round. A 325-foot stone wall now surrounds the main property (1½ acres on the corner of Walnut Tree Hill and Glen Road; a half-acre lot across the street on Walnut Tree Hill, believed to be a former Native American campground, has been left untouched), and Jean has planted just about every plant that now fills much of the land.

Jean Sander’s garden has been selected for inclusion on the next Garden Conservancy’s Open Days event, which is scheduled for Saturday, June 26, from 10 am to 4 pm. The garden is the only one in Fairfield County that will be open that day, and the only one scheduled this season in Newtown. (Nine additional Litchfield County gardens will also be open on June 26).

The house has taken seven years to restore, while the garden was started just four years ago. A garden designer by trade, Jean said it took a few years before the garden bug bit again after the move to Sandy Hook.

“It got to the point where I felt I couldn’t continue my garden design business without showing what I could do,” said the owner of Jean Sander Garden Design. “Now I still do just one or two gardens a year because I love to spend time on mine.”

Before the Sanders could begin, “tons” of poor soil and rock had to be removed from the property.

The property once was part of a 300-acre farm known as the first irrigated farm in the state. Even so, Jean said when she and Lincoln began moving dirt and rocks from the area that has become prime garden space, it seemed like no one had ever gardened on the property.

Many of the rocks were used to construct a raised patio adjacent to the kitchen. A set of antique French doors has replaced the windows that existed when the Sanders bought the house. Those doors now allow easy passage between the kitchen and the patio, which overlooks a trio of garden “rooms.”

An open arbor covers the patio, and a trellis was added to the west side of the arbor last summer. Plantings were established on the trellis, and Jean expects a wall of vines will eventually offer additional privacy when sitting on the patio.

To the immediate north of the patio a trio of garden rooms is surrounded by a huge Taxus hedge. This is Jean’s formal English garden, with a cottage effect.

“That means it’s wildly planted,” she laughed.

Two of the rooms, the smaller ones immediately off the patio, have gravel pathways. The westernmost room is what Jean calls her “troughery” — the room is filled with troughs dating from the 18th and 19th Centuries that came with the couple when they moved from Redding, some of which have been placed on straddle stones (antique stones from England and France that were used to hold grain bins up off the ground, preventing rodent infestation). The troughs have been filled with plantings, including succulents in one and alpines in another. In the same area a sundial rests atop a stone balanced upon another straddle stone.

Both sides of the garden rooms are heavily planted with small trees, conifers, and shrubs.

The main room, the third and the largest in the series, is the northernmost. In the center of this area is a special treasure, a combination of an antique planter that Jean has had for nearly two decades that is now coupled with a set of seven 19th Century stones that came from an estate in Maine. The Sanders found the stones at a recent Antique Garden Furniture Show and Sale at the New York Botanical Garden, and have placed the planter atop them. In the ground above the stones Jean has planted two types of thyme, while angelonia and miniature licorice plants fill the planter.

Many of the David Austin roses and poppies plants in the main room are already in bloom, but the established hedge and additional plants — plenty of white allium, globe masters, dwarf buxus, coneflowers, sedum autumn joy, phlox, campanula, white digitalis and plenty of geraniums (“all kinds of cottagey perennials,” Jean said) — continue to offer plenty to look at and enjoy whether seated at the café table in the second smaller room or while just walking through the full area.

The second garden area extends along the eastern side of the property up to the north-northwest corner. A woodland walk, which overlooks the confluence of the Pootatuck River and Lake Zoar section of the Housatonic, was replanted with about 25 native and ornamental trees and they have grown considerably in four years. Trees include five cryptomeria Japonica, or Japanese cedar, a favorite of both Sanders, and another five Katsura, which Jean admires for its foliage.

Last summer, many shrubs were planted among the trees including hosta, bleeding hearts, maidenhair ferns, variegated cornus, more digitalis, galium (sweet woodruff) and viburnums. The Sanders also invested in some Japanese peonies, something not found regularly in the area.

“We found these at Trade Secrets, an annual rare plant and garden antiques sale up in Sharon,” said Lincoln Sander. “You can find some really rare and interesting stuff up there.”

Jean has also established a pathway through this area, putting woodchips on the ground to form a wide pathway and underground cement moats to control the pachysandra that was pervasive when she started this garden.

“This is the only way to control it,” she said. “I love pachysandra, just not right up in my face.”

The woodland walk is reportedly one of Lincoln’s favorite places to relax. A few benches and one antique wicker chair offer comfortable spots to stop.

Property highlights also include an antique corn crib that dates to the 17th Century (“Most now seen are from the 19th Century,” Jean pointed out) that was moved from the current driveway location into the backyard, a three-seat outhouse, and a 19th Century barn with discreet covering for a propane tank and another antique trough-turned-planter.

“Jean’s garden was recruited for us by Page Dickey, one of the women who actually started the Open Days program in 1995,” Garden Days Conservancy representative Stephanie Werskey said on June 15. “We have a set list of criteria that we ask our volunteer recruiters to look for.

“Page is the author of several gardening books. She knows a lot about gardening and what makes a good design, so we trust her decisions when she submits the names of gardeners for consideration,” continued Ms Werskey, who has yet to see Jean Sander’s garden in person.

The Garden Conservancy Open Day program, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary this season, offers thousands of people across the country hundreds of opportunities to learn and exchange gardening ideas, or to simply explore and enjoy magnificent gardens and spaces not normally open to the public. This year, more than 360 private gardens in 21 states offer enthusiasts the chance to explore first-hand examples of outstanding design and horticulture.

Admission is $5 per garden, with children ages 12 and under admitted free of charge. All proceeds benefit The Garden Conservancy.

Additional information, including directions to each garden and the full 2010 season schedule, is available at OpenDaysProgram.org or by calling The Garden Conservancy, toll-free, weekdays between 9 am and 5 pm, at 888-842-2442.

Limited parking will be available in the Sanders’ driveway. The couple suggests guests park either across the street from their driveway on Glen Road, or across from the neighboring house at 107 Glen Road, which is state property and has room for a few cars to pull off the road. Additional parking is also available past the bridge on Walnut Tree Hill Road (opposite River Edge Drive), but the road is curvy and additional care should be taken while walking along that one.

(Visit NewtownBee.com, click on News and then on the link for The Bee’s Photo Gallery to see additional color photos of Jean Sander’s garden.)