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blue meadow farms landscape architects, franklin lakes, new jersey

A Working Garden

by Mary Jasch

Blue Meadow Farms Landscape Architects in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, encompasses seven acres of gardens, work site, the 19th-century homes of owner John Meeks and his son, JW, and one flock each of chickens and yellow pigeons.

A formal-type brick courtyard adorns the entrance to Meeks’ house with clipped boxwood and a turret-shaped aviary. Here, plants define the edges and the brick just kind of was there, says Blythe Yost, landscape architect with Blue Meadow Farms. “I love that. You almost never see that. If another landscape architect designed this it would have a shape. Here, it’s so organic.”

At the koi pond (not your “seen-one-seen-them-all” koi ponds), Sarracena blooms between stone slabs, statuary and softly draping plants overhanging the pond. Orfes, koi and their babies swirl past a waterfall and forget-me-nots. Ghost fern appears shimmering and well. Itea virginica ‘Henry’s Garnet’ is here and everywhere – a favorite of Yost with its drooping, clethra-like blossoms and red fall color – plus shade tolerance and deer-resistance.

A Japanese maple with a footed trunk planted 30 years ago, falls like a delicate shroud. “John love, love, loves to prune things and I’m sure this branch just wasn’t sitting right,” Yost says. It’s a perfect spot for a nap on a summer’s day. An espalier yew against a wall – a cast-off from a job that was slowly trained and now on display – reaches a limb gracefully under a window and box of flowers.

Garden upon garden, lots of natives… tall yellow lysimachia, mahonia, variegated Solomon’s Seal in shade, plus blue hostas – huge and little ones. Chickens roam and scratch the edges.

What about deer on this unfenced property? There is no deer problem here, explains Yost, for the land is sharpshooter, canine and deer decoy occupied.

Here, on this working land where plants are revered and understood, the tallest specimen trees grow such as a cluster of twining shadblow reaching high. Enormous river birch with such old bark looks like wild cherry and you only know it’s birch by looking skyward at the youngest branches. A lush weeping beech reaches the ground with nearby fern leaf hellebore in a shade garden, and then a reclining woman made of annuals.

See the chickens and coop, window boxes on JW’s house, Seven Son’s tree, a tree-climbing wisteria, a semi-knot garden and several long isolated beds with plants that run the gamut from trees to annuals in shade and sun.

Detailed ponds stretch the imagination, not surprising since Meeks was once aquatic plant grower for Waterford Gardens. One pond sports a pagoda and carved bench from Bali. An aquatic buttercup, Victorian lilies, lotus and pickerel weed decorate the koi pond. The blossoms of an especially cold-hardy variety of Southern magnolia smell like lemon pledge.

The water here is slightly murky. “I don’t like the water super clear because I like the fish to have some protection against the heron,” JW says. When the pond is cloudy, the heron that sometimes visits don’t seem to see the fish and vice-versa. “The fish can sense if it’s a bird or us. If it’s a bird they go down deep a couple inches and hide.”


Rhode Island Reds and Cochin chickens roam the property. What is the big deal with this latest craze, aside from amusement? “For me, they eat ticks,” JW says. “They also eat other bugs. I also eat a lot of eggs.” Four roosters keep an eye out for predators – hawks, dogs while the hens strut through the woods and scratch around the beds. “They’ll see me come out of the house and think I have egg shells with me so they come running over. The hens eat them and it helps them with their egg production,” says JW.

A tidy stand of goldenrod shines near skunk cabbage (either Chinese or Western), lobelia, purple smoke bush, a cut-back shrub and ladies mantle with jewel-like dew drops on its hand-like leaves.

A path with foot-shaped stepping stones leads through a shady background, buffer planting of kerria, deciduous azaleas, Cornus mas, buck-eye, winter berry and clethra.

Soon, a flowering bed of Mediterranean acanthus of Corinthian column fame, Siberian, German and Japanese iris, tons of peonies, and self-seeding lychnis leads to a hydrangea garden with shades of blue – Blue Angel, blue Atlas cedar and a blue pergola and several varieties of ligularia, then to another sunny border with spreading penstemon and anemones.

This garden is open to the public on July 9.
Garden Conservancy Open Days details: www.opendaysprogram.org




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published June 25, 2011

Photos to enlarge


Entrance to John Meeks' house, courtyard with aviary


Pond with orfes and koi


Pitcher plant


Shadbush, Amelanchier laevis


Pond with Victoria lilies


Acanthus and iris


Pretty in blue

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