Cheryl Dorris
Christine Peick gardens on a grand scale. Hers is not a plot constrained by convention or overworked with detail so intricate that it can only be appreciated up close.
No, the Peick jardin is one that celebrates trees and native plants whose hues and textures create an impressionistic landscape that can be relished at a distance.
For 21 years, Mrs. Peick and her husband, Bill, have made their home on a 5.5–acre site that wraps around half of a 4–acre man-made lake outside of Columbia, Ill.
Having grown up on an estate near Old War-son Country Club in Ladue with travels overseas, Mrs. Peick might have been expected to settle down in a tony part of St. Louis County.
Instead, the expansive landscape of Monroe County—and the good real-estate value there—drew her to a ranch house built 45 years ago in the French Country style. And the wide-open property beckoned her to put into practice the love of oaks and spruces her mother had instilled in her.
Mrs. Peick was fortunate that a windbreak of cedar, pine, and spruce had been established already. Without that, the winds that blow across adjacent farmland would buffet the outdoor living space that’s so important to the couple.
The Peicks planned from the start to open up the house’s dark, low-ceilinged rooms by knocking down interior walls and enhancing the two sliding doors and floor-to-ceiling windows across the back.
But first she worked on the view.
“I set out to create a Monet-style garden,” she says.
The lake’s surface reflects three golden arborvitae and clusters of blue-green junipers on the far shore; framing the property are dozens of oaks, spruces, pines, cedars, and sequoias that are indistinguishable as individual elements, but which together form the background of a canvas ready to be filled in.
And fill in Mrs. Peick has. Each year, with an eye to the future, the Peicks have made it a point to plant about 50 trees or shrubs.
On the far shore of the lake, Mrs. Peick established three groupings of five Pfitzer junipers, their branches stretching out at 45-degree angles, as if they were poised to step out disco fever–style. The junipers are planted so close to the shore that they’re reflected as three small “peninsulas,” reaching into the water and softening the shore.
Between two of the juniper clusters is a medley of spring-flowering trees—Snow Cloud crab apples, Eastern redbuds, pink and white dogwoods, saucer magnolias, and smoke bush. Yellow forsythias herald the arrival of spring and spark a succession of color that unfolds over the course of several weeks.
A profusion of azaleas and rhododendrons in the foreground, plus a single weeping lace-leaf Japanese maple, reiterates that cacophony of color around a slate patio—all in the shadow of majestic post oaks.
Scattered throughout the landscape are shrubs from which Mrs. Peick can cut flowers for bouquets: roses, many forms of hydrangea, ninebark, mock orange, and lilac.
But it’s the varying shades of green and the integration of textures that the Peicks pull from their trees that form the backbone of their garden.
“The English taught me to get an effect from different shades of green—blue-greens, gray-greens, dark greens—and to pull in reds and bronzes,” says Mrs. Peick.
There’s the dark, blackish green of a Black Hills spruce. The gray-green foliage of a saucer magnolia. The spearmintlike leaf and peeling cinnamon bark of river birch. The gray-blue of ‘Fat Albert’ spruce. The blue-green of the Pfitzer junipers. The yellow-green of willows. And the dark-green foliage and craggy forms of a silver maple and a Chinese chestnut.
Reds pepper the landscape as accents. Sequoias have volunteered their colors at the water’s edge, setting the tone with reddish bark, fine needles, and craggy knees that poke aboveground from the root system. Add to that the scarlet red of black gum trees, the burgundy of Norway maple ‘Crimson Sentry,’ the purplish-red foliage of purpleleaf sand cherry, and the wispy mauve of smoke bush.
With the house as the only bona fide structure,
Mrs. Peick uses her plants to create a framework.
Take the Magic Tunnel, for example. It’s an allée of trees planted in two rows in the European tradition. When the Peicks arrived, they found a mess of gnarled branching and undergrowth. Mr. Peick cleared out the thicket to expose rows of Eastern red cedars and white pines whose branches form a beautiful canopy.
A bench offers repose at the nearest entry point, and a stone urn creates a focal point at the far end.
It’s a special place for Mrs. Peick, a place where she goes to recharge after an energy-draining weekend performing with her band, Raven Moon.
Mrs. Peick finds there’s a repetitive rhythm to gardening that can mimic a musical riff. She also buys plants in multiples of threes and fives and places them throughout the landscape to create repetition. This sort of accent, she notes, adds interest to both the landscape and a musical score.
The Peick home’s front entrance is somewhat more formal than the rest of the garden, albeit in a French Country sort of way. A visitor passes a berm of white pine, blue spruce, roses, spirea, and lavender, the last of which scrambles over a stone wall to arrive at the front courtyard.
The frontyard is marked by the buttoned-down formality of columnar European hornbeams. Black wrought-iron fencing encloses the courtyard. A brick path winds past upright and weeping Japanese maples, dwarf English boxwoods, poodle-pruned dwarf Alberta spruces, and a tiny round pond. An arched brick facade covers the veranda, and Portuguese painted tiles mark the front step, creating a Mediterranean welcome.
Hydrangea, dogwood, Alberta spruce, barberry, poodled junipers, and roses wrap around the garage to lead one closer to the lake.
Pekin ducks loudly greet a visitor in the hope of securing more feed. The Peicks’ longhaired gray cat, Smoky, mews tentatively.
To the south is a gatehouse where Mrs. Peick stores musical equipment. It’s a setting often used for Raven Moon publicity shots, as well as relaxing on the porch.
Mr. Peick has a small vegetable garden in which he grows tomatoes, peppers, beans, spinach, lettuce, and potatoes. The couple enjoys cooking whatever’s in season.
The rest of the property is Mrs. Peick’s self-described “playground.”
Benches, urns, obelisks, and statuary are everywhere. A bench looks to the house from the lake’s far shore. Another faces the lake from a small dock near the house. And there are benches around the holding pond, in the front courtyard, on the slate patio, and in the allée.
This is a garden meant to be enjoyed.
Mrs. Peick says the soil is loamy and easy to work in. But frankly, it needs little work. “This is the richest soil in the country,” she declares.
That means she doesn’t have to fertilize, nor does she use pesticides, except to fight the bagworms on her prized junipers. She plants many native species—chosen for their propensity to attract squirrels, birds, and bees—and allows plants to reseed. She hardly mulches.
Nor does she irrigate. In fact, that approach says it all, she points out.
“I have a lot of things that people would think of as weeds,” she says. “But I think
it’s beautiful.”
