Meredith Mercer had luck on her side when she bought her house on Hessian Road in 2006. After living in various cities around the world, none with any land to speak of, she was ready to have a garden—and this house came with more than half an acre to play with. And though it had very little landscaping in place, it did have several large mature trees and was ringed by evergreens.
“In this area, the gardens are hidden in the back,” she said, pointing to neighboring houses with rather plain front lawns. Hessian Road is known as “Grigg Alley” for its cluster of houses designed by well-known architect Milton Grigg. Mercer’s was built in 1949 after Grigg visited Cape Cod; with its New England-style cedar shake siding, it’s atypical for the street and is now further distinguished by the lush, extensive gardens that designer Steve Trumbull has imagined and installed over the last seven years.
Before considering plantings, Trumbull and Mercer had to come to grips with the topography and architecture that were already in place. One problem was that the front yard was totally separated from the back by a breezeway and lattice. The back yard, meanwhile, sloped very steeply down to a concrete dog run.
Trumbull designed a much gentler contour for the back, bringing in truckloads of topsoil to create mounds and berms, where planting areas could be defined by appealing curves. “We both wanted a strolling circuit,” he said—a roughly oval path that would invite Mercer and guests to walk through the garden, glasses of wine in hand. The circuit would include places to occasionally sit, “rooms” with more than one entrance, and two sloping pathways broken by bluestone steps.
There was also the matter of privacy. “We didn’t want to wall off the street,” Trumbull said—but Mercer did want some sort of barrier between house and road. The solution in front was to install a picket fence 12 feet from the street, then plant ornamentals on both sides of the fence. Along the side of the property, tall cryptomerias and bushy switchgrass make for privacy.
The pair took out the lattice along the breezeway and put in a seating area; shortened the driveway to reclaim space for a kitchen garden; and installed ipe steps from there to the large existing stone terrace. Structure thus transformed, they were ready to think about plantings.
“I’m from Canada and loved the colorful falls,” said Mercer. Japanese maples—a favorite of hers and Trumbull’s—do the trick; there are nearly 20 different cultivars throughout the property, each offering color at its own time of year. A coral bark shows a red trunk in winter, while others have red autumn foliage.
Indeed, one of Trumbull’s main goals for the property was to gain color and texture through foliage rather than flowers, making for a lower-maintenance garden that would show interesting changes throughout the year. “Spring takes care of itself,” he said. “You have to work at the other three seasons.”
He calls the plantings here “a botanical collection.” Anchored by the Japanese maples, planting beds burst with a profusion of shapes and hues. One bed in the back yard mixes fountain grass, copper-colored carex, autumn fern, variegated dogwood, Japanese cedar cryptomeria, a dwarf elderberry tree, and rug juniper. Each brings its own form, texture, and color to the whole.
There are curiosities—an espaliered gingko tree against the garage; a rare Franklinia alatamaha tree native to one tiny area in Georgia and now extinct in the wild. But generally the plants are familiar ones: hostas, hellebores, ferns, all represented by a wide variety of cultivars marked by small metal tags. Rather than a cottage garden, which to Trumbull means “one of this, one of that”—Mercer’s property features groups: five or six hydrangea, say, instead of just one.
Cooler hues dominate—blues, lavenders, whites. “The whole garden’s restful,” said Trumbull. “It cools everything off in the hot Virginia summer.”
It helps that the backyard is shaded by a very mature maple tree—key to helping the whole garden seem, as Trumbull said, “like it’s been here a while.” He and Mercer chose materials to further this illusion—for example, field stone that already had some moss on it, rather than quarried stone that would take years to acquire that settled look.
Mercer and Trumbull collaborate on maintenance and say it’s not nearly as demanding as it might seem. She loves entertaining in the gardens, with their many half-hidden spots and archways that invite guests around the next bend. The property even served as the setting for a wedding, with the couple marrying under an archway on the terrace.
It’s not only people who appreciate the changes here. “Every year we get more birds,” Mercer said.
THE BREAKDOWN
Landscape designer: Steve Trumbull
Builder: Trumbull Design
Millwork/craftsman or specialty fabrications: Rails and gate: Paul McGill; fence: Brian Buckley
Usable square footage or site area: Just under one acre
Primary materials: Soil and stone from Rose Hauling
Plant selections: Hundreds of plant varieties, including Japanese maples, hydrangeas, crepe myrtle, hostas, ferns, and boxwood