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Photography by J.J. Lane
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A garden lane lined with flowering plants.
As gardens go, Mary Morgan's is an exotic encyclopedia, a virtual MoBot in miniature. It's so gloriously arrayed in specimen—trees, shrubs, vines and enchanting perennials—that you might suspect it's merely a case of very good shopping. Great shopping even, with hours spent sleuthing exclusive nursery websites, insider connections to superb wholesale growers and, well, deep pockets. But then you discover how much of what lives in her garden arrived in plastic grocery bags, often on the arm of a similarly passionate plantaholic.
"I have a missionary zeal to share plants," Morgan admits. So must her gardener-friends. "A lot of what's here has come from friends who have fabulous gardens," she says.
There are summer imports, too—boxed, bagged or potted—varietals carted home from nurseries around Rhode Island, where she vacations each summer. "Every year, I drive back with the car literally filled with things I can't leave behind," she adds.
There is so much to see, sniff and touch in just a half-acre that it's tempting to ask for a guidebook. Mary and husband Michael's white, two-story farmhouse centered on the landscape draws little attention to itself. With a simple, graceful curve, an arbor in the backyard establishes a sensory portal into the Morgans' glorious garden.
Follow the brownish gray-green Hackett stones that wind Chutes and Ladders-style through the foliage, and exploration becomes a walk-very-slowly, frequently stop-and-stoop experience.
There is a microcosm underfoot in ground covers such as the bright green mazus strewn with tiny lavender flowers, snuggled between the quarried stones. Nearby "Jewels of Opar" hug the rocks and bloom dark purple in the fall. Peer over the Lilliputian universe of a dwarf conifer garden or circle around the house to observe water lilies floating languidly on a new pond.
Or start with the trees: not a plain Jane or common elm in sight. There are slender Japanese hornbeams planted straight as a hedge; fragrant Chinese fringe trees and Shantung maples; and slow-growing paperbark maples, whose bark peels off in cinnamon and red-brown curls (all four are Missouri Botanical Garden Plants of Merit). More remarkable is Stewartia ovata, small and elegant with camellia-like flowers. The mightiest stand is of white pines that shelter the house on two sides, mitigating any errant sounds. Lady's mantle, astilbe, Corinthian columbine and Japanese painted ferns are stacked like colorful bracelets around the trunks of woodland shade trees, creating a gentle, layered effect.
Although Morgan's garden style is as unpretentious as her early 20th-century farmhouse, the density of its expression reflects a half-dozen locales and growing zones. Wherever she's lived, Morgan has taken advantage of local opportunities, botanically speaking—from her childhood in Connecticut to stints living in New Jersey, Cleveland, London and St. Louis.
Of all her adventures, her garden most reflects the time the Morgans spent living in a traditional mews house in London's South Kensington.
"I was able to travel to historic gardens like Kew and Kensington and take in [the Royal Horticultural Society] shows, which were spectacular," Morgan says, adding that she learned there how the garden should jibe with the house. She went to Sotheby's first garden auction that year and bought garden gates that later ended up at the house the Morgans bought on Lenox Place in the Central West End when they first returned to the United States.
Morgan's knack for choosing, retrieving and commandeering structural elements hits a sophisticated yet informal note. Among the most striking nonliving components: a Diane Sauer iron sculpture splayed against the fence in a corner of the back yard, a pair of brick pillars flanking the arbor, an iron settee, a low wooden trough and many pots.
Pots are everywhere, and special ones such as those by potter Guy Wolff stand no more prominently than an old olive oil canister or antique clay and lead pots.
"I love using pots, because you can ramp up textures and colors," Morgan says. "Most of what I have is old to very old."
Perfectly old, perfectly placed: a demilune French wire plant stand resides on the patio, with peeling paint and drooping racks that suggest years in a flower stall along the Seine.
Casting her eyes around quickly, Morgan sees a new gardening season with expert clarity: "The task ahead is putting the garden on a diet for its own sake, so it will have better definition," she says, as she prepares to weed, prune and pull.
But what will she tell her friends when they come calling with clumps of climbing hydrangea vines inside a Schnucks bag?
A-to-F as in Fabulous
A is for allium. Though others plant allium as chives or onion bulbs, Morgan’s choice is Schuberti, with an explosive lavender bloom, tilting slightly on its yard-long stem like a bobble-head. Or A is for akebia, a chocolate-colored vine that offers small, deep purple flowers as it climbs the trellis.
B is for bergenia, a shade-loving perennial Morgan planted as ground cover. (It’s called “pig squeak” for the sound its leathery leaves make when rubbed between the thumb and finger.) Purple balloon flowers, with their five-lobed buds, bloom here, too. B is also for “butterbur,” or petasites, a perennial with large, spreading leaves that were reportedly used to wrap butter in hot climates.
C is for clethra, commonly called Summersweet or sweet pepperbush. No ordinary shrub, clethra bears gifts galore: super fragrant white blooms in July and August and vivid yellow foliage in fall, with brown seed spires replacing its flowers for winter-long interest. Bonus points for blooming in shady spots.
D is for David Austin roses, “the best English roses,” according to Morgan. D is also for small, low-growing “Desdemona” ligularia, or leopard plant, with aptly spotted leaves.
E is for epimedium, a ground cover with spring blooms resembling a bishop’s hat.It’s also called barrenwort.
F—finally—has to be for fabulous, for nowhere in this Mary’s garden does there appear to be a single malcontent—no contrary silver bells or cockleshells, and not one darned dandelion.
