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Creating your own woodland garden should evoke a similar atmosphere and highlight those aspects you enjoyed most on your walk. In the Mid-Atlantic area, most woodland gardens imitate the rhythm and structure of North American deciduous forests. The infrastructure of horizontal vegetative layers—tall canopy trees, small trees and shrubs, and groundcovers—combined with constant wildlife chatter, are common woodland attributes. What makes it a garden, however, is your personal interpretation of the forest, a deliberate enhancement of favorite characteristics via a select menu of plants. “What is wonderful about woodland gardens is the subtlety of beauty in the woods—the textural combination and the ephemeral color effects,” says Gary Smith, artist and landscape architect. Working exclusively with public gardens and arboreta, Smith designed Longwood Gardens’ Pierce’s Woods; the Stopford Family Meadow Maze and the Native Woodland Walk at Pennsylvania’s Tyler Arboretum; and Enchanted Woods at Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library in Delaware. “There is a wonderful rhythm with lots of flowers in the spring when there is light, and then it quiets down in the summer, turns green, and gets slow and steady. In the fall drama returns with autumn color and fall-blooming asters. Winter provides the architecture of tree limbs and a sense of line.” Smith suggests that gardeners make their woodland gardens a personal experience by visiting favorite forests and studying them to see what they enjoy most. “You should look at the woods and abstract from observation why you like them,” he advises. “We began Pierce’s Woods by going to a similar habitat, the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, and visited plants in their native habitats. We harvested information from that experience to design Pierce’s Woods.” Photo Gallery
Visiting national parks and public gardens can be inspirational. An awareness of your senses will help you determine what you would best like to emulate in your own garden. You may prefer the stereo of birds singing and squirrels rustling, the dancing leaf shadows, or the scent of cool moss mixed with smoldering leaf decay. Or you may enjoy walking on woodchip paths, crossing a small stream, and resting on an old log. “The setting in a woodland garden is supposed to look more natural and informal,” says Sigrid Thomas. Along with Wendy Ely, Thomas publishes The Woodland Garden, a quarterly newsletter dedicated to woodland and shade gardening in the Mid-Atlantic area. “Even if designed by a landscape designer, it should look and feel just like one is walking through the woods.” After visiting national parks, coming back home to reality may seem daunting, especially if your stand of trees has matured into a tumble of shrubs, vines, and weeds. “The first thing to do is to clear out the exotic invasive plants and natives you don’t want such as poison ivy,” suggests Brenda Skarphol, Curatorial Horticulturist at Green Spring Gardens Park in Alexandria, Virginia, which features several woodland gardens and walks. “Common exotic invasive plants are multiflora rose, ground ivy, mile-a-minute vine, akebia vine, winged euonymus, some Asian viburnums, Chinese and Japanese wisteria, kudzu, bamboo, and lesser celandine.” After removing the unwanted flora, figure out your site’s assets: vistas to enhance, paths to solidify, spots of sunlight to hoard for treasured blooms. “If you determine a path—a way to walk through the garden—you will be able to control vistas and create themes and planting beds,” says Cathy Umphrey, Horticultural Director of the Historic London Town and Gardens in Edgewater, Maryland. London Town showcases 8 acres of native and exotic plants in a contemporary but mature woodland garden. Umphrey suggests looking at the existing vegetation in horizontal layers: identify the canopy trees, the understory or small trees and shrubs, and ground layers. “You need to evaluate what you have in terms of the maturity and health of the plants and the health of the whole system,” she says. The canopy trees, which determine the moisture and shade levels, will probably be healthy and too mature to remove. So you have to work with what you have, but you can think about keeping or eliminating shrubs and groundcovers. If you have oaks and hickories, you are lucky. They are the easiest trees to garden with because their roots run deep and don’t interfere with planting, and their fallen leaves don’t stick together. Tulip poplars are also manageable—their leaves don’t mat and their large, anchoring roots allow enough space to insert small plants. Silver and red maples and beeches are the challenges. They have shallow, fibrous root systems, making it difficult to dig holes to insert small plants into the ground. All of the trees consume a tremendous amount of water from the soil and prevent rainwater from reaching small plants. You may find yourself restricted to plants that survive in “dry shade” conditions. “My own garden has several red maples, and through trial and error I have found out what will grow underneath a maple and what will not,” says Thomas. “As a general rule, tough plants listed at the nursery as tolerating dry shade will do well under maples and beeches. Among those growing under maples in my garden are barrenwort (Epimedium alpinum), hostas (unfortunately, deer love them, too), lungwort (Pulmonaria), European ginger (Asarum europaeum), and the Lenten rose (Helleborus orientalis).” Gardeners should use plants to enhance their favorite forest features. For example, if you want to encourage birds, add berry-producing hollies and dogwoods. If you want vistas, prune back the branches, if you want more room and paths, remove bushes and plant groundcovers. To manipulate shadows, prune back limbs to increase sunlight or add small trees with delicate foliage. If you want your woodland garden to be a place of sanctuary, accentuate the green colors and use a fallen log as a bench. If you want to decrease green and increase other colors year round, focus on variegated and colored leaves, evergreens, winter bloomers, small bulbs, ephemerals, and fall berries. Woodland gardening is an exercise in shade gardening, but not necessarily native plant gardening. Purists will consider only natives, but it is hard to give up the popular “exotics” like hostas and epimediums, especially when they provide a great source of variegation and flower color. “I would start with natives so that the backbone of the garden is natives, then plant non-invasive exotics,” advises Skarphol. “Get things that are tough, that are tried and true. Find the good performers and don’t only shop in the spring when things are blooming.” Spring, of course, is the most alluring time. Epimediums, small bulbs, azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwoods, Virginia bluebells, wildflowers, and phlox burst into color, bringing the woods back to life. Then life settles down into a tapestry of green shades and textures, which is calming and could be a feature you want to enhance. Or, if you want more color, select variegated or colored leaves—white and green hostas and burgundy heucheras. Thomas suggests using the variegated five-leaf aralia (Eleutherococcus sieboldiana ‘Varietata’), a deciduous shrub that does well in dry shade. Skarphol also suggests bugbane (Cimicifuga), Virginia sweetspire and its cultivars (Itea virginica), and summer-sweet (Clethra alnifolia), especially the pink-flowered ‘Ruby Spice.’ Autumn brings a different palette of colors and also another spectrum of sounds. Berries, autumn leaves, goldenrods, and asters flourish until frost hits, and then the stillness settles into winter, which can be left bare or colorized. Wildlife can still be encouraged: some birds will feed off of seedheads and berries that persist into winter. For color, Thomas recommends planting evergreen shrubs such as rhododendrons, drooping leucothoe (Leucothoe fontanesiana), inkberry (Ilex glabra), Japanese holly (Ilex crenata), and cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus ‘Otto Luyken’). Skarphol also favors evergreens such as Christmas fern, ‘Maryland Dwarf’ American holly, and mountain laurel. Witch hazel (native Hamamelis virginiana and Asian hybrids) is one of the few trees that sports small yellow flowers in the winter. Lenten rose (Helleborus orientalis), also known as Christmas rose, is an excellent choice for beautiful flowers amidst white snow banks. “If you want a garden that is personal, you need to understand what is most appealing to you in that place,” says Smith. After visiting a wooded area for three seasons he began to appreciate the combination of textures. “If a characteristic stands out to you, then it is probably important for you.” If you can blend nature’s example with the right gardening techniques and plant selections, you can create your own personal forest. ß Green Spring Gardens Park: www.co.fairfax.va.us/parks/gsgp or (703) 642-5173 Historic London Town & Gardens: www.historiclondontown.com or (410) 222-1919 Longwood Gardens: www.longwoodgardens.org or (610) 388-1000 The New England Wildflower Society: www.newfs.org or (508) 877-7630 Tyler Arboretum: www.tylerarboretum.org or (610) 566-9134 Winterthur Museum: www.winterthur.org or (800) 448-3883 (Local or state native plant societies are excellent resources for locating sources of native plants or local sales.) Lower Marlboro Nursery Dunkirk, Maryland (301) 812-0808 www.lowermarlboronursery.com (Mail order retail only) Woodlanders, Inc. Aiken, South Carolina www.woodlanders.net or (803) 648-7522 (Accept orders via fax, email, and mail. Only ship October through March.) Asiatica Lewisberry, Pennsylvania www.asiaticanursery.com or (717) 938-8677 (Mail order retail only) Plant Delights Nursery, Inc. Raleigh, North Carolina (919) 772-4794 www.plantdelights.com (Mail order nursery) Meadowbrook Nursery/We-Du Natives Marion, North Carolina (828) 738-8300 www.we-du.com (Retail mail order nursery, September through mid-June) Books There are many books about gardening in the shade or shade-loving plants but only a few on woodland gardening and so far only one newsletter/magazine devoted to the subject. For more information on the quarterly newsletter, The Woodland Garden, call Sigrid Thomas at (301) 299-7093 or visit the web site at www.woodlandgarden.com. The American Woodland Garden: Capturing the Spirit of the Deciduous Forest by Rick Darke www.woodlandgarden.com The Woodland Garden: Planting in Harmony with Nature by R. Roy Forster and Alex M. Downie A Woodland Garden by A.T. Johnson Beth Chatto’s Woodland Garden: Shade-Loving Plants for Year-Round Interest by Beth Chatto The Woodland Garden by Robert Gillmore Woodland Gardens: Shade Gets Chic by Brooklyn Botanic Garden, edited by C. Colston Burrell (21st Century Gardening Series) Wall, Water and Woodland Gardens by Gertrude Jekyll |
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