Photography by R. Todd Davis
To loosely paraphrase Henry James, if it’s beautiful, it’s private, and if it’s private, it’s beautiful. Syllogisms aside, Frances Gay has created a diminutive evergreen sanctuary in Ladue by relying on ancient principles of hortus conclusus: the enclosed garden. She has planted boxwoods and hollies and hedges of magnolias, yews, viburnums and junipers—complemented by finely crafted lattice—to create boundaries, privacy and permanence.
The first order of business was to establish foundation plantings, including boxwood, azalea, ivy and dogwood. Already secure in her plant palette,Mrs. Gay hired Kelce & Pedley Designs to select the right varieties and refine the composition. High on her list of priorities was that the new landscape would read as already established. To achieve an instant look, Kelce & Pedley supplied massive bundled rounds of hardy Korean boxwood, supplemented by Green Mountain and Green Velvet varietals of boxwood, as well as the Graham Blandy boxwood, a columnar form.
The crisp lines of the Gays’ property lend it calm as well as a relaxed chic. Hardscape and plantings maintain an equilibrium, with elements of order and formality softened by layered foliage and curving paths, suggesting the look of a cottage garden. Mrs. Gay, skilled at interior decoration, set about making the outdoors just as cozy and hospitable as the indoors, envisioning multiple places to sit down with a cold drink. The pea gravel driveway ends with a delicate iron bench. To establish secluded retreats, Mrs. Gay also built garden rooms.
When a pine that had towered over the front of the house and garage came down, she designed a new brick terrace in its place and furnished the space with sundry antique iron planters, benches, tables and chairs. The real focal point, though, is an impressively large elevated urn brimming with plants. The urn’s secret height-enhancing pedestal is the old pine’s ivy-covered stump—an ingenious bit of recycling. This terrace, bounded by a white picket fence, shrubs and ornamental trees, is contiguous on two sides to the garage and an enclosed sun porch, effectively creating a protected courtyard. It faces the broad green lawn, which stretches to the street beyond, giving loungers the borrowed view of another Kelce & Pedley landscape.
The patina of age is everywhere: on the flaking wrought-iron furniture, the embellished stone planters and the worn brick pavers. When the first shipment of bricks was delivered, it got returned immediately. “Not old enough,” says Mrs. Gay, a stickler for details. The garden gates, like many of her prized garden ornaments, were inherited. Some carved-stone planters sport boxwood topiaries, some are packed with succulents and others burst with annuals, a menu that varies only slightly from one year to the next.
An inveterate collector with a discerning eye, Mrs. Gay takes care to marry form and function; her follies are decorative, but with a purpose. The neighbor who protested the notion of the Gays putting up a fence was eventually mollified when up sprang what Mrs. Gay cleverly dubbed white lattice panels. In addition, the back of the house features more garden architecture where Mrs. Gay persuaded her builders to erect a pergola roof over an existing deck. (She’s reluctant to share the contractors’ names because then “everyone would be asking for a pergola.” Probably right.) Beautifully shaded by thickly twisted wisteria vines and climbing hydrangea, this pergola is perfect.
Because it’s a short distance from pergola to property line and because the Gays had no desire to peer into their neighbor’s yard, Kelce & Pedley suggested a dense screen of Bracken’s Brown Beauty magnolias, planted on extremely close centers. Rounding out the larger landscape are leatherleaf viburnums and two huge specimen magnolias with Annabelle and macrophylla hydrangeas filling in the gaps. Tucked in among the hydrangeas are two large iron planters filled with rex begonias. Idiosyncratic ornaments like these, subtly placed throughout the garden, contribute much more than fluff—they are focal points that lead visitors to take a second look. Though the Gays’ property has no long views, no dramatic topography, it’s definitely not a garden to zoom through. It’s a place of refuge and refreshment.
For Mrs. Gay, the love of just being in a garden was nurtured by both her mother and grandmother, for whom she is named. She recalls her mother inviting her to witness the magic of just-opening blooms. Her eye was trained early to respond to beauty, and she quickly learned the delight of nurturing a garden. What’s impressive today is how well Mrs. Gay has achieved her mission: to create a serene garden that works with her life. As priorities shift and patterns change, her garden is adaptable and flexible. She’s elected to simplify the landscape by reducing the number of perennials, replacing them with flowering shrubs and more boxwood. The decision to vote azaleas off the island might come as a surprise to many since azaleas are so much a part of the fabric of spring in St. Louis. But Mrs. Gay is alert and responsive toher landscape’s vicissitudes, the storm-ravaged pines and aging native dogwoods. And above all, she’s pragmatic. While presiding over a Midwestern garden that epitomizes Southern comfort, she makes sure that things are always looking good with persistent panache.
A few tips from Frances Gay
- Find what works and use it. For her, boxwood rules.
- Don't over-mulch in beds. Avoid heaping tires of mulch around trees in the lawn.
- Use real containers—not faux.
- Hire good professionals. Her relationship with Kelce & Pedley goes back years; Horstmann Brothers helps maintain the landscape.
- Mrs. Gay uses more succulents now, having learned in Utah that they require little watering. A bonus is the architectural look created by an echeverria or an agave.
