Breathtaking Perennial Gardens at a Connecticut Country Home | Garden Tour & Inspiration

Welcome to my porch. I think this is probably my favorite space in the house. We have parties here, we have friends over for cocktails. The thing I love about it, I mean it's like a layered space. I wanted the porch to feel like it was an extension of my house but still obviously acknowledge that it's outdoors as well. All the furniture is, most of the things here are reclaimed, they're antique. I had them restored. This is all indoor-outdoor fabric so it may look like it's interior fabric but it's out here all the time and to withstand the elements. This is a little table I picked up recently at an auction. You know, occasionally I'm always swapping things out and I think that's the, that's what interior design is. You're always looking, you know, you always can find something that might be, you know, a better fit than what you had before. So this is a little dining area as well. I would say this is where we have most of our meals when it's warm out in the summer months. This is just, this is a ficus tree that I've had. I mean it's growing like a weed. I love plants. Thankfully I have a place to winter them over. Otherwise I don't know what I would do. I would have no room in the house for all these, all these things. But again, I think the secret to having a comfortable space like this is to, you know, have lots of plants and living things and also just like little things that I think add to, add a little bit of narrative. I love groupings and I think groupings are, you know, essential to creating a space. You know, whether it's a grouping of these little rattan heads or it could be, again, a grouping of plants or whatever it is. But you'll see there are lots of groupings ahead. Alright, so whenever I walk around the gardens I always bring a set of clippers just in case I see a weed and there are lots of weeds out there. I think I, I think I mentioned when, when I first bought this house this was basically very, this is a wooded lot and it was very hard to even see the house from the street. So the first couple years was spent just cleaning up the property, redoing the stone wall, which is quite ancient, just cutting down trees. One of the magical things that happened once I cut down the trees and I created some sunlight, I found these, discovered these wonderful rock outcroppings on the property which was a great opportunity to create these raised perennial beds that you see around here. A lot of the plants and the trees have gotten pretty mature now but when we first moved here everything was, I mean, everything's like grown in. It's actually, everything's overgrown now because of all the rain we've gotten. I like to think of the year 2024 as the year of the hydrangea because we've never, I've never had so many hydrangea as I've had this season. It's amazing and you're sort of seeing, seeing the tail end of it right now. This is, you know, it's August and there's usually not a lot blooming in August. This is like that sort of shoulder time. There'll be a lot more flowers blooming in the, you know, next month in September. Some, you know, there'll be the asters will be coming out and, you know, the sedum and a lot of sort of these fall loving flowers. So, you know, the first thing that blooms are the peonies and I've got about a hundred different peony plants on the property. You know, in July the hydrangeas start coming out and the hydrangea bloom all, all season. I do plant, I do pepper in some annuals as well, you know, just to add a little bit of color and you'll see, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot of material here, a lot. You know, this is just one of like six different gardens and this is mostly hostas, hydrangea, the peonies which, I mean, this is a beautiful garden in June and you can see from over here, it gives you sort of a sense of the undulating, the undulating property that I'm on. So, you know, there's not, there's no flat land here, which is nice, and it's just sort of undulating and then there's a hill, then it goes down again. Yeah, so it's mostly maples. The oldest tree on the property is this cherry tree and apparently this is the, this is a cherry tree right here, this big one near the road, and the, I was told that's the oldest, like the oldest cherry tree in Litchfield County. So, yeah, and it looks like it's been struck by lightning a couple times. Anyway, someday that will make a beautiful piece of furniture or a floor. So, you know, my philosophy on gardening is, I like to, again, just as I, just as I design interiors, I like to, you know, mix plants and I like to, you know, sort of mix shapes and add a little structure where I can, and I like that sort of mixture of structure and unstructured. And I'd say the main, the most, most of the structure of the garden is here in the center where I have these boxwoods. We call this, we also call this house Boxwood Row for this reason. And, you know, the boxwood, these are, these are little babies when I put them in, and you can see, I mean, they're, they're huge now, they're like six feet tall, but they, they provide sort of structure for the garden. And then everything else is sort of I let grow wild. This is a huge perennial garden. I'll take you up. A bit overwhelming too. There's a lot, I mean, again, like this time of year is like, it's actually time to start cutting back things as well. This is a different color every month. So right now it's mostly pinks, but it starts off being blue. This is a little patio I put in and I was weeding and I noticed that these little guys were coming in through the, through the stones, the patio, and I just left them. But again, why not? Like, you know, if you find something beautiful, like a beautiful moment, just let it happen. You know, there's no need, let them, let them grow through. And I think it's wonderful. It's a wonderful spot. You can sit here and you can sit here and you've got these beautiful, like this verbena, this background, backdrop of verbena. This pink flower is Echinacea and, you know, I, I think I planted only a few plants initially and you can see where it's like completely taken over, but I think it's beautiful. I mean, I love the pink flowers and they stay like this for a good month or more. That's the remnants of my beehives. I, although I haven't had bees in two, bees in two years because they were taken out by this, by this unwanted bear, I still keep them down there. You can see in the distance over here is a tree house. This is something I built for my son. And we, it's, we created this little, it's a little campground too, but it's a 40 foot high tree house and we have bunk beds in it. And it's, you know, it's a place where we used to go and camp out, kids and I. I have to say, I've camped out in a few times. It's a little creepy. You hear a lot of animals out there. One night I swear I heard a really large animal crawling on the roof, a little weird, but it's fun. It's really fun. And it's, what I like about it, it's like this little escape on the property. So this is, what you see here is this natural outcropping that, I mean, I think it's incredible. It's, I planted it all out with perennials and the are really happy there. But the, again, to sort of conform with the, with the contour of the rock outcropping, we made the pool sort of in a regular shape because I wanted to feel kind of, you know, I didn't want to feel, I want to feel like it fits in with the landscape as opposed to standing out. So you'll see, it feels more like a pond. So two weeks ago we were here and woke up in the morning and looked out here and there was a bear swimming in the pool. Literally a 400 pound bear was swimming in the pool and he was blowing bubbles. He cooled off and he went up through the garden. This is a vast perennial garden here. There's so much material growing in here. And again, it, you know, every season it's a different, every season looks different. Let's just say every month. Right now it's like the tail end, tail end, you know, asters are coming up. These are these giant asters, which are so cool. I think they just, I planted a couple here and now they're just taking over. But again, I think that one of the secrets to having a, having a, having a successful garden is to think about the things that are sort of native, native to the area. You want to grow things. You want to cultivate things that are happy, that are going to come back year after year. You also don't want to necessarily grow things that are going to be invasive or take over. And a lot of that's trial and error. For instance, this, this white plant material is called loosestrife. And, you know, I didn't know that it was so invasive. So, you know, there's certain things that you have to like cut back. You have to constantly cut back because you don't want it to take over the garden. It's easy. It's easy for that to happen. Oh, the other area I want to show you is this one more garden. It's more like a rock garden. I planted these vines and they, they've just taken over, but I love it. They bloom at different times, but I like how it's created this lush wall. It's like a lush divider between, you know, into the pool area. Nice transition. Yeah, this is a little, again, this is a little escape area. So it's like, it's an area to sit and read, take a nap. There's also a hammock here as well. It's a good escape back here. One thing I will say is, you know, we've, I've experimented, I've had vegetables growing here over the years and I've stopped with the vegetables. Now it's, I mean, I have herbs growing, but it's mostly just cut flowers because I think it's just one of the nicest things to do is to be able to come up here on the weekends and just cut fresh flowers from the property. So that's, that's what I like to do. Thanks for watching. Go to homeroving.com for exclusive content and shopping guides.