Home & Garden

Larry Weaner Designs Mostly Native Garden for Clients in Suburban Pennsylvania

[ad_1]

“It’s a partnership with nature,” says Larry Weaner, principal of his eponymous firm, about his approach to garden design. For more than four decades, his firm has been walking “the line between fine gardening and ecological restoration.” He considers the natural habitats of plants for his designs, sticking to a palette of mostly native varieties. “The idea is to replicate or adapt what’s going on in nature,” he says. “And then letting nature express itself and enjoy the surprises it brings.”

For this suburban garden in Huntingdon Valley, PA, a suburb outside of Philadelphia, Weaner transformed a landscape that was mostly lawn into a native plant wonderland, equipped with a managed woodland, meadow, and bog garden. He designed more formal elements closer to the house that gradually grew wilder the farther one moves away. Growing plants native to their region supports biodiversity, he points out. “You don’t need to grow a special pollinator garden,” says Weaner. “The entire landscape is one.”

Weaner relishes the interactive experience that results when you don’t try to dominate nature but allow it to flourish. “The landscape is dynamic. There’s always an element of surprise because you won’t find the same thing every year or experience the same sequence all the time. And as a result, you become more engaged because there’s always something new and exciting awaiting you.”

Weaner takes us on a tour of this garden.

Photography by Larry Weaner.

Above: Just outside the house, the design for which was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, Weaner designed a formal pond, with tall, mauve Joe-Pye weed and purple narrowleaf ironwood (Vernonia lettermannii). “They are both highly attractive to pollinators,” he says. They also serve to hide the view of the bog garden, which is right behind it, allowing for a big reveal when you move past them.

Above: The owners love to garden and have a passion for bog plants. Weaner built a weeping container, filling it with a variety of pitcher plants and orchids. He surrounded the bog garden with “Lysimachia lanceolata var. purpurea, which has beautiful spreading foliage with red leaves in the spring and yellow flowers, and lavender, which is not a native, but loves the hot, dry, reflective sunlight from the stone.” — Above: The owners love to garden and have a passion for bog plants. Weaner built a weeping container, filling it with a variety of pitcher plants and orchids. He surrounded the bog garden with “*Lysimachia lanceolata* var. *purpurea*, which has beautiful spreading foliage with red leaves in the spring and yellow flowers, and lavender, which is not a native, but loves the hot, dry, reflective sunlight from the stone.”

Above: The plantings surrounding the formal pool are carefully designed, but have a naturalistic feel that gives some intent to the wilder landscape.

Above: Standing on the walkway looking at the formal rectilinear pool, which is planted with native lily pads and lizard’s tail, you can see the meadow in the distance, and the property’s only very small patch of lawn.

“None of the moss was planted on the edge of the stream,” says Weaner of the area, once an expanse of bamboo. “But as soon as we saw it happening, we said, oh, this would be a beautiful edge. Let’s remove anything else that shows up there.” In the spring, blue flag iris blooms on both banks. — Above: “None of the moss was planted on the edge of the stream,” says Weaner of the area, once an expanse of bamboo. “But as soon as we saw it happening, we said, *oh, this would be a beautiful edge*. *Let’s remove anything else that shows up there*.” In the spring, blue flag iris blooms on both banks.

[ad_2]

Source link

ReportWire

Larry Weaner Designs Mostly Native Garden for Clients in Suburban Pennsylvania