In Search of Secret Gardens, Reader Edition - Gardenista
When we asked readers recently what you wanted to see more of on Gardenista, about a zillion of you responded to our survey (thanks... ...by the way) to say you’d love to visit more of your neighbors’ gardens–the tantalizing ones you get to glimpse through a hedge or when a gate swings open. Photograph by Maria Nation. To kick off the series about readers’ gardens, we visited screenwriter Maria Nation in western Massachusetts, at her home in Ashley Falls where she’s taught herself cloud pruning to create a garden with good bones. When Michael Leva, a New York-based fashion creative director, bought an 18th century farmhouse on four acres nine years ago, the gardens were in disrepair; he fixed that. For more, see A Secret Garden: Spring Comes to Connecticut. Photograph courtesy of Michael Leva. Photograph by Christine Hanway. London antiques dealer Will Fisher of Jamb opened his garden to us recently; see An Antiques Collector’s Garden in London. Samantha Greenwood, the special events chef at Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, grows a high and wild tangle of 80 varieties of roses in her garden. Photograph by Mimi Giboin. London architect and shopkeeper Ben Pentreath’s Garden in Dorset, in Full Bloom. Photograph by Christine Hanway. In the heart of London, Christine created a micro rain forest of hardy, shade resistant plants in her backyard. On the outskirts of San Francisco’s Sunset District surfer neighborhood, restaurant owners Dave Muller and Lana Porcello grow menu items in a greenhouse they built out of wood scraps and discarded windows. Photograph by Michelle Slatalla. When architect Nicolas Soulier and ceramicist Cécile Daladier started their entryway garden, they were looking for the rain, the wind, and the sky in between Paris’ seven story buildings.