A footbridge connects neighboring property.
The garden of Lois and Vic Robertson is glorious in every sense of the old French word: delightful, splendid, and regal.
Visitors find delight in surprises at every turn. Look skyward where a Lady Banks rose has climbed to the canopy of a pine tree to fountain sprays of yellow downward. Likewise from the same tree’s branches, Virginia creeper sends down a green leafy curtain in summer that turns burgundy in fall. Sounds of baby bluebirds come from the bluebird box. A strawberry begonia peeks out from the mortar of a raised brick bed. Three–foot–high clumps of saffron iris bloom along the shoreline of the lake where mallards nest. A red Japanese maple displays seedpod earrings.
Hot lips sage, Salvia microphylla, is puckeringup for summer. Walk through a soft carpet of pink petals shed by the crab apple tree. Tomato plants are tucked in the few pockets of extended sunlight on the property.
The garden is splendid in scale, layout, and choice of plants. Twenty–five years ago when the Robertson’s home was under construction in Lake Arcadia, the brick raised beds were included in the plans. Lois researches plant selections by attending seminars, reading books and magazines, visiting gardens, and perusing plant sales. Reading fellow master gardener
Margot Rochester’s Down to
Earth influenced the acquisition of geums, a perennial described in the trade as only for locations with cool summers. Lois purchases plants from many sources including Woodley’s Garden Center, Lowe’s, Home Depot and the Farmer’s Market.
Lois’s favorite bed contains complementary combinations of different species, all of which are in excellent health: tassel fern, geum, Encore azaleas, Lenten rose, Solomon’s seal, strawberry begonia, sandwort, spiderwort, lamb’s ears, heuchera, hosta, columbine and iris. Her most recent installation may be the most challenging, a collection of roses including Peace, Betty Boop, Dolly Pardon, Julia Child, Living Easy, Touch of Class, All American Beauty, and Over the Moon.
The gazebo offers a garden lookout in all directions.
Regal aspects of the garden are the manicured beds and paths, spires of cypress trees wearing holly fern shoes, a stone footbridge over a canal, the gazebo for outdoor dining and relaxation, and the serenity of the setting.
When the spring azaleas fall silent, specimens waiting in the wings will take their turn in an ongoing succession of bloom: hydrangeas, daylilies, clematis, iris, dwarf miscanthus ‘Adagio,’ and roses. Each season brings glory. By fall the mammoth fig tree will have plentiful fruit for Vic to make preserves, a task he assumed after Lois retired from the chore. Vic smiles and remarks, “She is the master and I am the gardener.” Lois concedes, “Vic does maintenance.”
Vic’s ladybug friend.
Japanese maple wears seedpod earrings.
One of Lois’s “strictly by chance” glorious color combinations
Lois Rober tson sits among the plants in her favorite bed.
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