(with photos)

BY KAAREN VALENTA

Like many gardeners, Maureen McLachlan's interest evolved slowly.

"My gardening came without me knowing -- it grew with me," she said.

After living on Juniper Road in Newtown for 17 years, Maureen and Richard McLachlan and their two daughters moved in 1986 to a modified cape-style house that they built on part of an open meadow at the corner of The Boulevard and Schoolhouse Hill Road. The property had been in Dick McLachlan's family for years, and when it was sold, he and Maureen kept the corner lot of about an acre for themselves.

"My husband grew up on this property -- it is really home to him," Mrs McLachlan said. "He always wanted to build a house, and he always wanted to build on this property."

The development of the gardens at the McLachlan residence evolved slowly, but surely over the following years, as Newtown gardener/author Sydney Eddison pointed out when she included the McLachlans in The Self-Taught Gardener (1997, Viking/Penguin).

"The landscaping was done when the house was built. I would have done it differently now, but I work around it," Mrs McLachlan said. "There is a lot of trial and error in gardening. If something doesn't work, I change it. If a design or color works well, I like to repeat it throughout the garden to have continuity, a full look."

With the house bordered on two sides by streets and by houses on the other sides, the McLachlans realized that their first priority was for privacy. They planted evergreens across the back of the sloping lot and enclosed the deck on the east side of the house with walls of airy lattice. At first, they planted honeysuckle at the foot of the lattice. It was lovely and fragrant, but didn't provide the privacy they needed, so they replaced it with a single wisteria shrub.

The plant grew quickly, soon covering the lattice and forming a leafy green roof across the trellis roof.

"It's so pretty when it flowers," Mrs McLachlan said. "It's great for privacy and shade, and the birds love it, but the wisteria is aggressive. It broke all the latticework on the deck and we have to keep cutting it back."

Besides the need for privacy, Maureen knew that she did not want any of the house's foundation to show. She had the beds across the front of the house dug extra deep, so that an ample amount of perennials and annuals could be nestled among the needled and broadleaf evergreen and deciduous shrubs that the landscaper planted. The effect is a delightful dooryard garden that looks attractive all year, as Mrs Eddison pointed out in her book.

The two McLaughlin daughters, Kelly and Kerry, graduated from Newtown High School in 1989 and 1990 and left for college. No longer involved in school-related activities, their mother admits she was a little lonely at first, but "gardening just sort of took hold of me."

"I just love being out there -- gardening is very fulfilling," she said, explaining that it is also very therapeutic. "I love to share this interest with friends, especially those in times of crisis. Gardening has made a difference in their lives."

Her first garden was a friendship garden, one created by the sharing of plants with other friends. She planned a rose garden in 1990.

Eventually she moved the junipers and PMJ rhododendrons from the front of the house to the side and interspersed them with grasses, coneflowers, Russian sage, butterfly bushes and sedum. To the front entrance, she added bulbs and woody perennials for winter interest along with the roses, azaleas, cleome, caryopteris, catmint, phlox, perennial geraniums, and lavender that borders the brick walkway.

"Sydney Eddison told me that everything in gardening is personal -- do what you please because there is no right and no wrong to gardening," Mrs McLachlan said. "She gave me a lot of encouragement."

Slowly gardens began to fill the McLachlan property. In the back is a 20-foot perennial and herb garden. More than a dozen large whiskey barrels filled with plantings dot the property. A "white" garden on the hillside features plants with all white, silver or blue blooms. "It's the only garden we can view from the inside of the house so I wanted it, even though I don't encourage anyone to garden on the side of a hill. It's not the easiest place to garden," Mrs McLachlan said.

Japanese maple, hydrangea and flowering crabapple trees dot the property.

"If I had a favorite flower it would be the hydrangea," Mrs McLachlan said. "But a garden is not just color. It is texture, background, shapes, forms. I'm really into hardscape structure in the garden -- arbors, walls, things that give you another place to sit."

Last summer, the McLachlans erected a long trellis with honeysuckle along the side of the house.

To add to what she was learning first-hand, Maureen McLachlan joined gardening clubs, read voraciously, took garden tours, and finally enrolled in the master gardening certification program, an intensive 13-week course taught through the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System. After passing the exam, the students must provide 60 hours of volunteer work which Mrs McLachlan did primarily by manning the telephones at the extension office, answering questions on gardening. She took classes at the New York Botanical Gardens, and worked for a spring at Twombly's Nursery in Monroe. One day a week she works at Emily's Cheese & Eatables in Bethel, where she uses her creative energy to design gift baskets.

"My design background is natural. I like to decorate, I'm a very visual person," she said. "I can see what I like and make it work. In my gardens, I want a spiritual, soft, inviting look."

Recently, Maureen McLachlan started her own business as a garden design consultant.

"As you get older, you appreciate the sharing of things," Mrs McLachlan said. "It is very therapeutic. Gardeners are great people."

Gardening is also a year-round activity, she said.

"I don't find gardening just a summer pastime. I do a lot in the winter, too. If someone doesn't garden, they won't understand why you don't want to go South in the winter."

"There's an awful lot of beauty out there," she added, glancing through the window at the deck where a red-headed woodpecker busily worked at a piece of hanging suet.

"I just love being out there -- it's very fulfilling."