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Monmouth County Coastal Garden Tour
by DIG-IT
Come see five private gardens in Rumson, Fair Haven and Little Silver on Wednesday, August 5 from 10 to 4. Located within Zone 7, the gardens exhibit New Jersey’s landscape history and a diversity of species. All gardens are within five minutes of each other. Suggested places for lunch will be included with directions. A certified landscape designer, and member of Association of Professional Landscape Designers, will be at one of the gardens to answer your questions about garden design. The tour is co-sponsored by The Friends of The Frelinghuysen Arboretum and DIG IT! and will benefit The Frelinghuysen Arboretum. TO REGISTER, please call the Arboretum at: 973-326-7603
Haven on Shipee’s Pond, Fair Haven
This terraced hillside garden on a half-acre has a hundred-acre view overlooking a pond and the Navesink River. Enter a courtyard garden with raised beds of trees, blooming shrubs and perennials. A flagstone path leads through a shrub garden down to a stone terrace where mixed borders with roses and a profusion of hydrangeas surround a free form pool and waterfall. Pass terraced gardens with roses, hollies and herbs down to the dock with intimate views of Shipee’s Pond with bird song, serenity, wildlife and perhaps an osprey pondering its next meal. A shade garden with potting bench provides privacy while enjoying the tasks of gardening.
Shanley Garden, Rumson
Spacious, luxurious and manicured describe this garden dominated by a Mediterranean-style stucco house and grand trees. Atlantic White Cedar with shaggy red trunks greet the visitor. Large sections of intense shrub borders undulate along the property’s edge. Shade gardens seem to shimmer and urns of bright tropicals decorate entrances and patio steps. A grove of skinny spruce and wide maples is underplanted with curvaceous gardens with blocks of hydrangea, holly, ericaceous shrubs and hosta.
Garden of Green, Rumson
A quiet formality pervades this Rumson garden surrounding the recently-constructed New England shingle style home. This is a garden of green, of ornamental grasses and specimen trees, of a woman who enjoys the personalities of plants, such as Osmanthus, her deer-proof favorite plant. Once a nursery, this organically-grown landscape has Norway spruces all in a row. Several 20-foot enkianthus, camellia, stewartia, solid beds of cherry laurel, and patches of fern and holly show the way to “the wild way back.” A litany of natives and not-so fill large blocks of nursery and trial gardens where shoulder high sea oats grow.
Swallowfield, Little Silver
A 1920s house and garden are the setting for this 2.5-acre landscape. Atlantic white cedar and rose arbor lead to terraced, sunny, perennial gardens that give an immediate sense of a nature preserve within structure and formality. There, native plants mingle with the ornamental. A long view across various garden areas, some secluded, includes a tiled patio dining area with hydrangeas. A picket fence encloses a wildflower meadow that abuts a stone path axis through a series of symmetrical gardens: milkweed/rose gardens, a circle garden of daylilies and Resurrection Lilies around a sundial, then through an arbor to a pond of water lilies, roses, native flowering wetland plants, crepe myrtle and a bamboo backdrop. The property is a designated Backyard Wildlife Habitat and Monarch Waystation.
Brewer Garden, Little Silver
The entire front yard of this cedar shake Jersey shore home on two acres is a mosaic of shrub roses galore, flowering shrubs, perennials, ferns, trees, and ground cover. Prostrate holly, leucothoe and ice plant cascade down its banks. An iron gate leads through green gardens where everything grows huge including mounds of hellebore, giant yews and tall sensitive fern, a cherry laurel hedge and pond with a woodland garden on its shore. Holly, inkberry and hydrangea flank a freeform pool, cabana, and private boardwalk surrounded by a mosaic of gardens and paths on Little Silver Creek.
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published June 24, 2009
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