From GILDED AGE ESTATE to NATIVE GARDEN PARADISE: Touring STONELEIGH

Alright, so we had a break in the day and we didn't have any other plans, so Sander and I came to this place called Stone Lee, which is part of the Natural Parks Program and it's free to come and it is an incredible place where we could see some native plantings and an insane house that was donated to the public, basically, so that people could explore and then they do house tours and garden tours, but we're here on our own and oftentimes we love to come to these places just to get some inspiration and design ideas for our own land at Flock, so we're just going to poke around and see what we find today. Hope you enjoy it. Look at how this tree, I don't know if it was a London plane tree or an oak or what it was, but it's so compelling that they left it there. You know, we're like leaving one of our old trees there for the hawks to sit on, but it's so sculptural and the color of the gray against the gray of the stone and the slate roof, that's pretty cool. I want to walk up on the steps and just see, I want to see like the foundational plantings. So they have this sweet gum right here, but it's more of the columnar shape as well as some of these arborvitaes. Have a nice trip, see you next fall. I'm distracted by the plants. Oh, so this is like some of our Lonicera, this is a honeysuckle. And this looks like a cottonwood of some sorts, you know, it's in the quaking aspen genre, and then right here you have like the Physocarpus, but it's not quite a red color, it's like this nice green color. And then this is out of bloom, but you can see the seed heads of this Baptisia, which is usually a spring bloomer. And then here you have some, obviously like this Hibiscus, which looks great. And then this is Euthymia graminifolia, which is the grass leaf goldenrod. So they're just letting all these plants like come up, it's in August. This is a Callicanthus, probably burgundy spice. And actually you see a green stem coming up with the Callicanthus flower. So that's a sweet shrub, kind of smells like a tropical fruit. And then this of course is some lace cap varieties of hydrangea arborescens. And here's a rose, I'm not sure what kind, but it has these lovely hips, very lovely hips. Look at this place, it's exquisite. I mean, you don't find workmanship like this any longer. I mean, you see it in some of the older universities, but you know. And this is pretty cool. I don't always see this as a native plant. This is Comptonia peregrina. It's called sweet fern. It's a great medicinal, and as you can see, it kind of spreads by rhizomes. And it's not a fern, but it's called sweet fern because it has that kind of ferny look to it. Wow, and look at this. This is either a London plane tree or it's a sycamore. I think it actually looks more like a London plane tree, to be honest. Look at the structure, the arms coming out. I always love these trees. They like wet areas, but I always like them because they always had that army bark. It's just really beautiful. And when they start getting older and older, the bark starts to peel some more until it's like white. And then it's very striking in the landscape, no matter what season. It feels like fall, right, when we're walking through this. Let's take a look at these hydrangeas. This might be, I'm guessing here because I'm not, nobody's given me a tour, obviously, but this looks like hydrangea arborescens Haas halo. Yes, it is Haas halo. There we go. It actually has some name tags. I didn't see that before. So the only reason why I noticed that is because Haas halo has these kind of more green flat tops and they tend to be one of the best pollinator plants as far as hydrangea arborescens goes. I think the one Mary Nell is a cultivated variety, which is cultivated a lot less than Haas halo. That might actually bring in more pollinators than this version, but you could actually get that. I met the guy who actually found that in nature and then they cultivated it. So some of these gardens obviously don't have a lot of flowers at this point in time because perennials, they'll flower once in a while. Look at that maple back there. Where? Oh, the Japanese maple. Yeah, that's incredible. It is nicely quaffed. It's hard to tell how old these things are because they grow slowly. So this is not all obviously all focused on native plants, but I think a lot of the herbaceous perennials that they've planted in here are native. And they got some great plants like these are probably some type of wispy Norway spruces. And here we have Helenium autumnal. See a little bumblebee up there and some skippers. This must be in really heavy sun obviously because they're starting to wane. And then this is a Lonicera that is growing in between all this Norway spruce, so they're really wild-like. And it looks like a trumpet creeper that's crawling up the side of the, I want to call it a castle because that's what it looks like. It's great though because then they have this staghorn sumac, which is Rus typhina, growing in amongst, which is a rhizomatous plant by the way, so it can actually overtake some places, but they have it as a beautiful plant there. This I think is Panicum niagara falls, if I'm not mistaken, the way that it's spilling out. And some Coriopsis, so this looks like, I'm guessing red satin, Coriopsis red satin. It looks like a tick seed variety. And then this is Gora, not, I don't think this is Gora biennis, it could be, but it could be Linmerii. This is, this is a beast. This will seed like crazy. And this is a Lonicera kinsley's ghost. You could tell by that very verdigris color. And that is a native plant that is native to the western part of North America. And then this is a Fothergilla of some sorts. Kind of looks like a witch hazel. And then the Symphio trichums, which are the asters, are just coming out. And then this looks like an Amsonia hubrictii, which will start yellowing up in the fall. And this one looks like a Senna of sorts. You could tell by the leaves that this is a really good nitrogen fixer. And if you just circle around here, you have some, well this is a Verbena of sorts, maybe Stricta, Verbena stricta, which is a more dry-loving Verbena compared to Verbena hastata. And then you could see the Eupatorium or Eutrochium. It's now considered in this genus, which is a Joe pieweed, is just clambering with bees and skippers and butterflies. And this is one of our big native plants. This is a Vernonia, our ironweed, and you'd often see this in wetter areas. And this is a Panicum here. This one looks like Shenandoah red, so it has those red tips, but it's a Panicum vergatum, whereas this doesn't have red tips, so this is probably different. Oh, and a swallowtail sonder just spotted on that Joe pieweed. I should say we're here in August at this time, so we're starting to see basically the fall plants. They have a little red maple planted here. And this is a weeping beech, but this is a European beech. It was clear that they probably had a lot of specimen trees here. This whole space was actually designed by Olmsted. It started there, and that's why it feels a bit more spacious and park-like. And then they started to plant in, I think this has taken on many different iterations if I'm not mistaken, and then they started to plant in different native plantings throughout. So some of these trees I bet are very, very old. This is like a mist, a blue mist flower, which is an annual, but that actually seeds itself in, so it comes back. And this is a one of our native verbenas that grows a little bit low and has a to spread. And then summer sweet is a type of clethra. It's called clethra olnifolia. This one has a cultivated variety named bumblebee, and you could probably tell that it probably attracts a lot of bumblebees when it's in bloom. This is great. It's a nice balance between these massive trees, openness, and then just wild scaped gardens. It's not bad. It's definitely more of my taste. Lobelia in bloom. This is Lobelia sylphidica, which is our purple Lobelia, and we should probably keep an eye out for Lobelia cardinalis because that should be blooming simultaneously, which is the red one. And then this is an Asclepias. This is one of our, probably Asclepias incarnata. This is a milkweed, and it will be the host plant for the monarch butterfly and also insects like the monarch tussock moth. This is also, I think, another arborescens, but you could see that it has this mophead. This is a mophead variety, whereas the other ones we saw were more of a lace cap variety. And hydrangeas come in so many different forms. You know, you could have a panicle, you could have a lace cap, you could have a dome, you could have a pyramid. This also looks like some type of, well, this is the beach, but look at how some of this is coming out. But what kind of beach is this? This says it's Fagus grandifolia, so this is an American beach. Some really tall grasses here. This kind of looks like an Andropogon, maybe Girardii, so it's one of our native tall, tall grasses. This is a very good view of the honeysuckle, Lonicera reticulata, and this is also Kinsley's ghost. So you could see the verdigris color of that, so beautiful. A whole bunch of Amsonia planted in one swathe, which is beautiful, like that, and then a Physocarpus with that dark leaf. And this tree almost looks dead, but as you can see, it's still growing. And their choice was to keep it up, because it probably harbors a lot of great habitat for wildlife and insects. This looks like a type of cherry tree, is my guess, and we also have cherry on our land that look like it's completely dead, but still has life in it, and it still produces fruit too. And I just want to point out that they have some soft landings planted under here. So you could see, we just did a whole episode on the fact that there's a lot more folks that are starting to do soft landings under here. The mulch circles are a thing of the past, and now the soft landings are kind of taking precedence. And the idea of that soft landing is for like insects, when they're in the tree, they could drop down and then they could pupate, basically. And it's under a prunus tree, which is one of our top, I would say top five trees, either three to five trees that are important for insects. Look at this larch, this tamarack. So this is actually, looks like a coniferous tree, but it's deciduous. It will lose its leaves in the winter months, which it doesn't look like it would lose its leaves, because it looks like a conifer. And those are weeping red buds. I'm not sure what kind it is. Yeah, want to do that? I'm just enamored by all the big trees here. And here you could have your rhododendrons, which probably look exquisite in April, May. We have our white ashes. This is Fraxinus americana. I guarantee you they're treating this with an imidacloprid and just treating it so it doesn't get bowled over by the emerald ash borer. Yeah, there's also a lot of stems coming out of the bottom, maybe. Well, it doesn't look like it has as many holes coming out. Wow, this is pretty cool. All right, look at this landscape. It's like a little forest glen. Look how straight this tree is coming up. I think we're actually going to be approaching the native meadow. So this will be interesting to see, especially as we establish other aspects of our native meadow. You know, I wouldn't say that ours is fully native, because we have other plants that have cropped up in there. And so I've just been learning to manage my expectations with it, and also learning to love some of the plants that aren't native that look really beautiful, and then also can serve a purpose. This one looks like it's heavily focused on maybe Joe Pyeweed in Vernonia. Meadow Vista is one of the most significant design contributions of Olmsted Brothers, an influential landscape architecture firm who worked at Stoneleigh for five decades. They worked here for 50 years. I guess they were the ones who first established this, which was like way ahead of their time. Yeah, this is pretty amazing. I mean, it may have been reinvented too. So it looks like some of it has been maintained and already cut down, which is interesting, because maybe they maintain this for spring blooming plants, and then this one's more for fall blooming plants. Because if you chop this down, then you would get more spring bloomers, obviously. Now this is hemp dogbane. So this must be a wet area, because if I'm looking at this, this is hemp dogbane, which is in the Apocynaceae family. And then you have the Vernonia, and then you have some of the Helianthus. And then this looks like all Joe Pyeweed, but it's already gone to seed. Acer griseum. It's like we see this everywhere. What a great specimen. Not native, but a lot of people love this tree because it has such a beautiful bark, and it has four season interest. I've never seen one with so many samaras on it. Look at these little helicopters. And this will give you a really good view of either their London plane trees or their sycamores. I'm not sure which one. But they're starting to get color on it, and then you can see the bark and how it's peeling. It has that more kind of greenish-white color. Oh, in the back end of the buildings with that cupola sonder with the copper top. This is a great garden. Oh, here's some clethra that still has a little bit of flowers on it, too. You could smell it. You see the pollinators are licking the last drops of it. One of our native luniseras, which I think is just really beautiful. I mean, it could be a cultivated variety of lunisera. We have this growing on our archway. I mean, look, you have these pokeweed, which is the black, you know, with a catbird in there. So you can see how important like these native hedges are. And then you have these large plants. You know, this would be considered a weed. I have it growing in our meadow. But then you have your goldenrod. You have your asters coming in. This is going to look great in September. Some of the coreopsis. It's more of the grandiflora types. And then this one is our verbena hastata. So this is the one that looks a little bit wet. No, I think the other one was a different verbena, the strictive one. So they're doing all this renovation, I guess, on the greenhouse. That's probably cool for you to see, huh? Well, it looks like they're either going to do stone around the walls or stucco, don't you think? Yeah, that's going to be beautiful. They've got a trench in the middle for water. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because they'll need that if this is going to be a greenhouse area, because if there's water and then the rainwater needs to fall down somewhere. Very nice. Very nice. OK, let's see if this says sycamore or London plane tree, because I haven't been able to ID it. London plane tree, that's what I've been calling it. Platanus acerifolia. So as I said, sometimes it looks very similar to our sycamore. It has that same kind of look. I mean, they're in the same family. Look at this. Look at the gray squirrel. This is when I wish I brought my peanuts. These pupillas always look so small from far away, and then you approach it and you're like, that's a big structure. Now, this looks like a newer native planting that has come in. Of course, I'm making all of this up because I don't really know, but you could just tell how small it is and the way it's planted and obviously all the mulch space, which is not common here. So these look like cherries going in, and this is a sursis. And then this looks like a bone set of sorts, some type of eupatorium, but maybe not total eupatorium. I see poison ivy, so I'm not going to be walking too close into here. I'm sure they have to have dealt with that. I think what makes these landscapes so majestic are the big trees. And I feel like that's one of the things that we're kind of lacking in our landscape, except if you go into the forest, we have some of that. But even this, where you have a little bit of space around a tree, you could admire it a bit better. So I understand that philosophy with Olmsteads, thinking about that and creating it to be more of a park. Once the tree has less competition, too. So it really becomes the tree that it's shaped to be. Shaped to be as opposed to, yeah, lanky. This is incredible behind you. I mean, that is an homage to a tree that once stood. Let's see. Tree sculpture, please do not climb. I mean, it looks like it's driftwood. And this just goes to show you to appreciate the beauty, even after death. You know, someone might say, oh, let's take this out, but they can admire it. Look at this tree that's obviously being attacked by, maybe it's oyster mushrooms. Yeah, but there's still growth on this side. And this looks like a type of maybe pin oak. But I'd venture to say those are quite edible, but maybe not at this big stage. Let's see, this one says, no, this is a red oak, Quercus rubra. It's really hard to see when they're so tall, you can't get a sense of the leaf. Here's the leaf a bit more. These are really nice, too. I'm not familiar with this tree, maybe some type of elm. Yeah, so this is a Scotch elm. I wouldn't have known it because it is a non-native, Olmus glabra. And this one's called Camper downii. So we had, of course, Dutch elm disease for a lot of our elms. And now there are cultivated varieties of our American elm, Olmus americana, that we started to plant in our habitat. And hopefully they're supposedly more resistant to Dutch elm disease. But that used to be another tree in our landscape that we had in our forest that we just don't have anymore. Wow, so beautiful. So gorgeous. That's such a great idea. You cut a tree in half and you have the limbs act as the table legs. I wonder if this is concrete. I don't know, it might be. Wow. Oh, it's a faux bois. So this is a type of French style called faux bois, which means fake wood. F-A-U-X-B-O-I-S. Yeah, you think the whole thing is concrete? I think the whole thing is concrete. They probably have steel in the legs. Yeah. Wow, that's gorgeous. I mean, faux bois furniture is so expensive. You'd have to make a mold. You'd have to make a mold. Look, this is hydrangea corcifolia. So our oak leaf hydrangea planted with the masters. And we just did a nice hydrangea video on the five main types of hydrangea shrubs. So I'll link to that. I think they're great for foundational plantings. They're also great as a hedge. Great on their own. And this looks like a meta sequoia, Don Redwood. So that's a nice base. You'll recognize this tree, Sander, because we have this on the bottom pond. Yep. If only it was this big. Ours is getting pretty big, you know, you know, you're going to say that maybe 20 or 30 years from now. I love the structure of these old trees. Back to where we are. And I think we're going to cut over to the pool area or the former pool area. And we'll see some of the native plantings there because they were really nice. The Comptonia again. I tried one of these plants at our place, but I don't I don't think it took these specimens. I mean, just imagine this landscape without any of the trees. It would change the whole character. All right, let's head over this way. This is where the old pool was, but they've kind of turned it into, you know, kind of a nice walk path and a keyhole garden. Oh, yeah. So they did this. They might have put like some kind of fabric underneath and created this little bog space. So it's like a design element. So you see the Saracenias and the Gentians, the bone sets. I'm not sure what this is. It's very cool. Maybe some Lyotris right here, which would be a little late in the season. So some pretty cool plants in here. That's a great idea. You have a walk path. Then you have this collects water and then fills up for plants like this. It's not a bad idea. And you can see they have the little bog garden over here as well, which is great because this is always like what brings kids in. They love the idea that these plants eat creatures. I love this idea. It's such a really well designed. And then this is just a natural native hedge where you have like the herbaceous perennials. You have some grasses and then you have some trees that might be a magnolia right there. So this is where maybe our magnolia grandiflora. And then this is the arborvitae red fire chief and then a corcifolia, hydrangea corcifolia. And then this may be a type of wood aster coming out. And then, of course, this is our Circus canadensis. And there's still a lot more to see, but this is 40 something acres. So I think we're going to finish it off here and then you'll be able to see more of this if you're ever in town. We have some more lovely garden tours from our trip this summer coming throughout the year. Now, if you enjoy videos like this, do us a favor and leave a comment, subscribe, hit the notifications button, or even become a channel member. That helps the channel grow so we could keep on producing more videos like this. Thank you again, and we'll see you in the next video here on Flock.