A Glimpse Of The Garden

By Nancy K. Crevier

“A Glimpse Of The Garden” is a miniseries focusing on the heart of a gardener’s work — a special spot, an extraordinary plant, a place of respite, or a place that evokes a heartfelt memory. What is down the garden path of your friends and neighbors? What is down your garden path?

At the end of a tidy gravel driveway bordered on one side by stone walls that have stood for a hundred years and a sweep of woods and newly crafted stone walls on the other, is the home of Sandy and Newman Marsilius. When they purchased the house ten years ago, the woods had crept up nearly to the back of the home and none of the stands of perennials, annuals, or ornamental grasses that surround it today existed. They are the work of years of seven-hour days that begin early in the spring for Ms Marsilius, and each garden reflects her heart and soul.

“I’ve always gardened, from the time I was a little girl in Ohio. I liked to go and look at gardens. It is something that I was always drawn to,” said Ms Marsilius. She does not presently belong to any of the local garden clubs, but Ms Marsilius was one of the original class members of the first master gardeners classes offered at the Fairfield County Extension Service, where she learned the science of gardening that helps her design her gardens and keep them blooming right up until the first frost.

The woods have given way to carefully considered plantings. “I like to try new plants and I try to put in a lot of the nice, native plants,” said Ms Marsilius. She has also learned to select plants that will not attract the deer, or to be religious about spraying the tastier plants with deer repellents on a regular basis.

“This property has two elements,” said Ms Marsilius, “what was here when settlers first settled Newtown and what I’ve cultivated. From what I learned from my neighbor early on, the late Al Goodrich, this was probably once a big farm. I’ve tried to preserve that feeling.”

Her plantings include Japanese maples, dogwood, spirea, cone flowers, towering cleome, unusual salvias, vitex, weeping mulberry, butterfly bushes, and ornamental grasses so tall they dwarf a person standing next to them. She also tries to incorporate asclepias, a variety of milkweed attractive to butterflies, dill, and verbena bonariensis, all of which are host plants for butterfly larvae. Many are clustered in gardens that curve about the home and lead to the wooded cow path, others flow along the inside edge of the stone wall dividing the home’s terrace from the rest of the landscape.

It is on the terrace level that Ms Marsilius has planted several of her favorites, knowing that they are protected from the deer and convenient to enjoyment as she and her husband relax outside. “I have gotten very interested in specimen hydrangea the past couple of years,” she said. In addition to the climbing hydrangeas that she planted ten years ago and which now clamber 30 feet up the chimney side and even higher on the trunks of trees, she points out a variety called “Annabelle” that was given to her by the designer of the terrace, in honor of his daughter Annabelle, born while he was working on the terrace.

Also included in her hydrangea collection is an oak leaf hydrangea, and other varieties with names as delicate as the flowers that bloom on the bushes: lime light, pinkie winkie, and little lamb.

“This is like painting, to me,” said Ms Marsilius. “Gardening is a very artistic endeavor and I like the horticultural knowledge I gain as I work. Every day I think, ‘I can’t wait to do something in my garden.’ And the frost comes….”

That is what is down the garden path at the Marsilius home.