Frederick County MD Gardens Open Day – Part 3

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The last garden we visited on The Garden Conservancy’s Open Day last Saturday was the Rausche Woodland Gardens…and it was my favorite. It was a wooded, sloped lot with a house roughly in the center….understory plantings everywhere. The most formal part of the garden was a small grassy area that had been a badminton court when the family was younger….and now held benches and beds of plants that needed a bit more sun that the heavy shade in the rest of the yard. Under the trees is lush and green broken by bits of color of things in bloom.

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The Rausches propagate many of the plants themselves…including jack-in-the-pulpits. I saw the biggest jack-in-pulpit I’ve ever seen in this garden! I didn’t take many pictures in this garden because I was simply enjoying the ambiance of the place. If I ever own a property that has lots of woods like this…I might just become a woodland gardener too.

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Stone pathways wandered through the plantings of hellebore (deer don’t like) surrounding hostas and other plants that deer eat enthusiastically. The rhododendron and azaleas were past blooms. The recent floods had done some damage (there was a new path that water flowed….where it had never flowed in the nearly 4 decades of garden development) but the garden was recovering.

When two of the big trees died, they had them cut into 6-foot-tall stumps and the carved! The results frame their woodpile! I liked the squirrels spiraling the stump. On the opposite side of the stump is a hollowed place – a secret place for something to hide.

Frederick County MD Gardens Open Day – Part 2

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The next garden we visited on The Garden Conservancy’s Open Day last Saturday was Surreybrooke in Middletown, MD. Surreybrooke was a working nursery complete with hoop  houses…also the home of the owners for the past 4 decades. We walked through the succulent hoop house to get to the more private gardens around the house. I liked the lushness and color of the succulents they had.

Garden art was everywhere in the plantings – a swan gate, miniature houses surrounded by plants, birdhouses, and many kinds of plant containers.

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The owners have collected and moved old buildings such as the spring house – I love the ruggedness of the logs and the variety of chinking.

There were benches of a variety of materials, vintage, and design.

The grounds were soggy from the recent rain so stepping stones were much appreciated.

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The high point for me at this garden was the Children’s Garden. There was a tree house with stairs not quite wide enough for an adult…and garden art among lush plantings. The toad houses and child-sized benches were functional…

The rest were whimsical.

The hedgehog stepping stones led to an outhouse….that still looked functional!

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Frederick County MD Gardens Open Day – Part 1

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Last Saturday was The Garden Conservancy’s Open Day in Frederick MD. I had heard about one of them (High Glen) from a Master Gardener who had enjoyed the gardens a month ago and encouraged everyone to take advantage of the Open day on June 2. I bought tickets online and then was dismayed last week when it appeared that the forecast for Saturday was a high probability of rain. The ground was soggy --- but the clouds were holding their moisture rather than dropping it. We started our walk around High Glen at 10 and managed two other open gardens before we headed home in the afternoon. I enjoyed each garden – for different reasons – and will post about each one separately. Today’s post is about High Glen.

The walk around the gardens started out well. I noticed some tiny fungus growing on the mulch in the bed just outside the welcome station in the barn. It was birds nest fungus in all stages of development. I was glad I had the clip-on macro lens for my cell phone handy.

Further into the bed were some mushrooms with caps that had split – making them look like flowers. Perhaps the splits were caused by the very soggy ground conditions? It could be what happens when mushrooms get too much water!

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But the draw of High Glen is formal gardens. There was a fish pond complete with koi, water lilies, and sculpture. Are the sculpted birds green herons? The necks are not long enough to be great blues.

The vistas of the eyebrow in the front of the house, the ellipse in the back, and a garden gate…

And then pathways of mulch or stepping stones…even the rocks and plantings around the pool…all a feast for the eyes.

I took pictures of plants as well….can’t help it when I visit a garden.

The sculpture – other than the on the at the fish pond – was all over the garden and quite diverse: wire insects, wooden balls, metal spinners, and glass flowers. One of my favorite sculpture was of to children (Victorian?) interacting in a garden border.

There was a frog on an old fashioned bicycle, a large peacock (near the house and probably positioned to be nicely framed by a window when viewed from the inside), and life sized figures tucked into flowerbed and corners of walled lawns.

There was a summer house and a bocce court….lots of walking around space. It was the kind of garden I enjoy visited but would not want for my own home.