A Tropical Garden

10/1/06

         Several weeks ago my friend Angie and I visited a few of the gardens on the Garden Conservancy list of "Open Days."  If you're unfamiliar with this organization, you can read all about it in the column I wrote in 2005. Click on Archives on my home page, then click on Garden Conservancy half-way down the 2005 list.

        Studying other gardeners' gardens is a great way to get new and fresh ideas for your own.  It's also a way to see unfamiliar plants in the flesh rather than in catalog photographs before you decide to buy them. The garden we visited in Farmington, however, was so unusual that there was no thought of duplicating  any aspect of its unique plantings.  That top photograph gives you just a bit of an idea of how lush and amazing the garden was. 

        Were we still in Connecticut or anywhere else in New England?  It was as if we'd been set down on some exotic island in the Caribbean or were strolling through someone's property in Costa Rica.                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        The garden paths,  some of flagstones, others packed down with deep brown compost, were edged in dozens of unfamiliar tropical plants and unusual annuals. They wove in zigzags to suddenly come upon a patio with a fountain or lead into a woodland planted with ferns and periwinkle or open onto a perfect tiny lawn provided with a garden bench.

        The original trees of this ambitious

one-acre garden provided a tall canopy

overhead, and it was mind-boggling to

realize that everything beneath the

canopy had been planted by the owner, 

Steve Silke.   There were castor bean

plants at least twelve feet tall, a dozen

different varieties of coleus ranging in

color from white and pink to orange and

deep purple. Huge banana plants, cut

back each winter, shoot up come spring

to reach enormous proportions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       Tucked among the amazingly colorful vegetation, so thick it left not an inch of space for a weed to grow, were unusual statues, comical  figurines, giant vases,  a line of Tibetian prayer flags and a complicated fountain called "The Crab".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        I think we spent well over an hour wending our way  through the gardens,  meandering down a path hidden by tall whispering grasses,  relaxing in chairs beside a a large metal stork splashing water into a pool.  Angie calls the picture below "Where's Hatsy?" I had to put on my glasses in order to find myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Next summer visit some of the Conservancy gardens.  If you're lucky, Mr. Silke's fabulous display will be included.

 

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