TodayJune’s Garden of the Month is a shady spot
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Michael Bupp/The Sentinel
Carol Henry’s garden has been named garden of the month by the Carlisle Garden Club. The garden, located at Henry’s North Middleton Township home, will be on display to the public next weekend.
Michael Bupp/The Sentinel
Carol Henry’s garden has been named garden of the month by the Carlisle Garden Club. The garden, located at Henry’s North Middleton Township home, will be on display to the public next weekend.
You could spend a hot afternoon — or the entire summer — relaxing in Carol Henry’s garden.
The shady spot sits at the rear of her North Middleton Township yard and includes a stone path that winds through about a 70-by-70-foot garden filled with hosta, ferns and a plethora of flora.
Henry’s garden has received the honor of Garden of the Month for June by the Carlisle Garden Club.
Bit by “the bug”
Henry lived at her home for 20 years before she decided she wanted a garden and, in 1996, she decided to begin the project. “I just got the bug,” Henry recalled. She admits she never had much of a green thumb, but her mother had a garden, so she learned from example.
Henry began by selecting a spot in the rear of her property along a tree line. “I left all the trees up. I wanted a shade garden,” she said.
She contacted a local nursery, which did the design and the path. “They gave me a plan, but I didn’t follow it to a T,” Henry said.
Twelve years ago, the plan design cost $4,600 and required eight trucks of top soil. Henry did all the planting herself, adding four red bud trees and a whole lot of hosta.
To date, she estimates she has probably spent more than $10,000 on the garden. “I’m still planting,” she said, as she paged through a scrapbook of the garden from before the first shovel of dirt was moved.
Friends pitch in
To cut down on cost, Henry said she wasn’t too proud to shop sales and accept offerings from friends. “It’s very expensive to buy plants,” she said. “Sixty percent of my garden is from family and friends.”
Many of the plants came from Dorothy Deitch, who used to live in Boiling Springs and would host semi-annual sales of plants she had divided from her own garden. “I’d buy things for $1 and $2,” Henry recalled. “Half of my garden is from her.”
The garden, which is laid out in a square, with a pebble path meandering through it, includes 27 varieties of hosta; four varieties of ferns — Christmas, cinnamon, American royal and sstrich; bleeding heart, astilbe, turtlehead, joe pye weed and 1,200 bulbs, including snowdrops, daffodils, tulips, crocus, striped squill, glory of the snow, winter aconite and dog’s-tooth violet. The garden is bordered by 35 hicks yews.
There are yellows and purples, pinks and white throughout. “You need a lot of variegation in a shade garden,” Henry said. “I do try to do a lot of whites. With a shade garden, you really need whites.”
Sometimes, the color comes even when she doesn’t expect it.
“Two years ago, my pink bleeding heart put off a white baby,” Henry said. “That was a surprise.”
Throughout the garden are statues, bird baths and a bench or two for those who want to sit a spell.
Trial and Error
While Henry’s garden is pretty much the way she wants it, there’s always work to do.
“I mulch it every two years,” she explained. “The year I mulch is usually the year I separate things.” She figures it takes about 10 cubic yards of mulch to complete. “I hire somebody to help me. It’s back-breaking doing all that mulch.”
And each year, she plants annuals. Her secret: Use a bulb digger to plant them. “The more plants you have, the less weeds you have.”
Aesthetics are important, too.
“Don’t plant in rows,” she advises. “Alternate. You want an odd pattern when you plant, and plant odd numbers.”
Along the way, Henry has learned many important things. For instance, “You can’t plant annuals on top of daffodils. All my miniature daffodils are gone,” she said. “You learn your lessons.”
And, you can’t always predict how things are going to look when they’re full-grown. “I’ll buy things and put them in and then they’re too tall and I move them,” Henry said.
She said her favorite spot is a corner of the garden with astilbe and sagae hostas. “I spend a lot of time out here,” Henry said. But her years of hard work are finally beginning to pay off. “Now I’m going to enjoy it. It looks so nice.”
Check back in July to see Carlisle Garden Club’s next Garden of the Month.
