Avant Garden f17
By Derek Fell
Bucks County reminds me a great deal of the West Country of my native England where the rolling, wooded hills of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall are threaded with rocky, fern-fringed streams crisscrossed with all manner of bridge designs, including wooden, metal and stone. Similarly, in Bucks County, tributaries of the Delaware River—such as the Tohickon, Tinicum and Pidcock creeks—cascade between forested hills, creating rock pools, waterfalls and rapids along their rush to the sea.
Even if a property does not have a natural running stream it is a relatively easy project to create one using a pump that re-circulates water along a meandering water course made waterproof by an impermeable liner. The stream can be as long or short as you wish to make it. At my home, Cedaridge Farm, even though we have a tributary of the Tohickon Creek running through, we have added a short man-made stream closer to the house with a nature trail that loops around it. This wood-chip path crosses the lower part of the stream by means of stepping stones, and further upstream by a stone slab bridge that emulates a similar bridge I admired during a trip to see the Imperial Gardens of Kyoto, Japan.
A stream for the garden doesn’t need to be long or wide. Obviously, if you need a pump to re-circulate water, the less water you need to move the lower the cost of the pump, but even the smallest flow can be made to meander between mossy boulders and cascade in a series of stepped waterfalls to create the musical sound of running water that is soothing on the senses. It’s not only fun visiting local quarries to choose rocks, pebbles and boulders to make the stream look natural and hide the waterproof liner, it is equally enjoyable visiting local nurseries to acquire plants for the stream margins and also for the shallows.
For pond margins my favorites are hostas, astilbe, Japanese irises, cardinal flowers, blue lobelia and Japanese primroses as well as insect-eating pitcher plants and a bog orchid known as angel’s tresses, which blooms in fall. In particular, I like to see colonies of Japanese primroses planted in pockets of peaty soil as they offer a rich assortment of colors, including red, yellow, orange, pink, purple and white. I also like to see an assortment of ferns including the native ostrich fern and hay-scented fern, and an occasional water lily adding color to a small natural-looking pool. There is even a beautiful grass that creates an explosion of yellow leaves, called ‘Bowle’s Golden’ grass which will thrive with its roots permanently submerged in shallow water.
Among flowering woody plants for stream banks my favorite is the weeping Japanese maple known as ‘Waterfall’ as its delicate, finely cut leaves will arch out and dip its branch tips in the water to provide shelter and shade for goldfish and koi. In fall the leaves of this maple turn a glowing orange color. One of the best short manmade streams can be seen at Peddlers Village, the community of country stores in Lahaska where the late Earl Jamison made a natural looking water course after studying streams in the Pocono Mountains to decide his ultimate design. This beautiful feature of the Village gardens begins at a waterwheel, travels down a rocky slope crossed by stone bridges, the stream banks planted with magnificent specimens of conifers and Japanese maples. The water flow terminates in a miniature duck pond fringed with shrubs and bog plants besides the Village Green.
During my years of designing gardens certain styles of bridges have caught my fancy, no more romantic than the French-style trellised bridge that spans a corner of a pond at Magnolia Gardens, near Charleston, South Carolina. Also romantic in appearance is Claude Monet’s arched Japanese bridge with a wisteria canopy at his restored garden in Giverny, France. Although I have never seen the Magnolia Bridge imitated, I have seen dozens of Monet bridges copied. Closest to Bucks County is an exact replica at the Rats Restaurant, Gardens for Sculpture, near Hamilton, New Jersey. I even saw a short section of stream in the Ilam Garden, Christchurch, New Zealand crossed by three Monet-style bridges.
Another popular bridge style influenced by Japanese water garden design is the Zig-Zag bridge, made from wooden or stone slabs that but together in a staggered fashion to cross narrow expanses of water. Replicas of these are available from the internet, including www.thecedarstore.com which features a scaled down replica of Monet’s Japanese bridge (with or without wisteria canopy) and various lengths of the Zig-Zag bridge.