A Glimpse Of The Garden: Growing Stones

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?

Frank and Jan Gardner are avid gardeners, with dozens of hydrangeas, iris and hosta springing from the rich soil of their gardens — much of that soil harvested from their natural pond. Honeysuckle and rose vines ramble up the side of the house. Fields of wild phlox grow uninhibited beneath the outstretched arms of trees. Annuals are intertwined with perennials to create seasonal streams of color.

 But what grows best in their garden, unhindered by the ravages of weather or wildlife, are the hundreds of feet of rambling rock walls that Mr Gardner has crafted since moving to the one-plus acre property in 1975.

His first stone walls sprang from rocks recovered from his own property and the property of friends in Newtown. But New England rocks tend to be round boulders, good for forming a base, he discovered, and not so terrific for creating a level top surface. So in the 1990s, he started bringing rocks home from a friend’s land in the Catskills of New York. Those rocks are thick, flat slabs, ideal for capping off a stone wall.

“It’s a labor of love,” Mr Gardner admitted.

“I have rebuilt parts, due to frost heaves, or because I have learned a better way to do things over the years,” he said. He has learned how to select the right rock, for the right place. Laying them out on the ground gives him a better idea of the various shapes and how to fit them into place.

“It’s like a puzzle. I use the smaller rocks to shim, and the New York rocks for the flat, top surface,” said Mr Gardner, who is also particular about what side of a stone he wants facing out.

“If there is moss or lichen growing on a rock, that’s what I want showing,” Mr Gardner said. He loves the textures and colors nature provides in every stone, he said.

Snaking down the driveway and all the way to the pond beyond their house, runs Mr Gardner’s pride and joy, nearly 200 feet of stone wall. Like all of the walls he builds on the property, it is a dry wall, meaning that no concrete is used to hold the stones in place. And like all of the walls he builds, this wall has been completed in stages. The last 40 feet have been built over the course of the past two or three years.

Rock walls trim sections of the large pond, where giant bullfrogs float on lily pads and the narrow leaves of pickerel bush shiver with the movement of calico koi fish nearby. Yellow flag iris adds a burst of color at the edges of the pond and peaks out from beneath slender trees on the tiny island at the far end. Beyond the edge of the pond, a purple haze signals a cluster of bearded and Siberian iris blooming there.

Lichen frosted wedges of slate-colored rock surround a manmade pond corralled within a rustic picket fence just behind the house. Tumbling over those shallow walls are clumps of sedum and ivy vines. Wild geraniums, coral bells and pink flowering scabiosa lean forward to reflect pretty faces in the water.

Rock walls border smaller gardens and guide the visitor from sunny spots to shady spots, each wall defining a space for flowers and shrubs that the Gardners have specially selected. Deep blue baptisa and columbine nod their heads, as if to encourage passage through an antique iron gate that breaks up the flow of one rock wall and marks the pathway to the back portion of the property. Japanese painted ferns, Christmas ferns, and cinnamon ferns lean long fronds over walls, backed up by the platter-sized leaves of elephant ear plants.

When a large pine tree was shorn of dying lower branches, the pine needle-covered area that opened up beneath it sprawled into the lawn. It cried out for a stone wall to delineate the spaces, so Mr Gardner donned his gloves, collected the rocks, and planted another wall. 

“It’s a work in progress,” said Ms Gardner. She is never surprised, she added, to walk out and discover her husband has begun yet another stone wall project. With the truck still loaded with Catskill rocks from a recent visit, she knows that the work is not complete.

“I don’t think I’m done,” confessed Mr Gardener. “I’ll have a load of rock and think, ‘Why don’t I just continue the wall…’”

That is what is down the garden path at Jan and Frank Gardner’s.

To view more photographs of the garden, please visit www.newtownbee.com, where this story has been posted under the Features tab with an accompanying slideshow.

Jan and Frank Gardner will present their gardens as part of the June 30 Newtown Historical Society’s House and Garden Tour. The 16th annual event, for which organizers have found nine locations that fit a theme of “A New Look At Newtown’s Oldest Places,” includes six homes dating from the early 18th Century to the early 19th Century and their gardens, as well as three garden-only locations.

The self-guided tour will take place rain or shine, from 11 am to 5 pm. Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 on the day of the tour. Maps will be provided with reservations as well as to those who purchase tickets on June 30. For tickets or additional information call 203- 426-5937 or visit www.NewtownHistory.org.