Gardens of James Doyle 2

This is another garden by James Doyle (see post below) that members of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) visited late last summer in North Salem, NY.

You enter via a long gravel driveway, and as you look to left, not too far from the entrance, you encounter an austere reflecting pool with a bronze sculpture by Hanneke Beaumont. It's flanked on both sides by alleés of flowering cherry trees. (Prunus serrulata).  This lovely, uncluttered water feature gives you a hint of what lies ahead.

From a parking courtyard, you walk through tall hedges to a small dining patio with another of Doyle's tall zinc fountains in the center.  Again, water cascades down in flat sheets, this time into a hexagonal basin. As you walk through the patio, there's a small, ordered grove of apple trees to the right.

As you emerge from the patio courtyard, you take a left around the side of the house, walk through an alleé of hawthorn hedges and come upon this arbor-like sculpture "C Note Chicago Blues" by Chakaia Booker.  It's made from recycled tires. A walk through the arbor will take you straight to the formal perennial garden.

 

 
In the back yard, at the rear of the house, there are two main  features: 1) From the long enclosed garden room attached to the house, you look out on a thin, rectangular in-ground fountain set flat into the lawn... and 2) a vegetable garden enclosed by clipped hedges.

There's a view straight out from this upper level -- it's lined up perfectly with the center of the perennial garden and with the open-air amphitheater, which was still under construction during our tour. 

The perennial garden is filled with ornamental grasses, black-eyed susans, canna lilies, hostas and much, much more -- all vibrant reds, yellows and  purples enclosed in formally clipped, vibrant green hedges. A huge formal urn sits right in the center, and gravel paths circle around it and radiate out to the entrances and exits.

Finally, you walk straight across a huge expanse of lawn to the amphitheater -- an what could be more appropriate for a couple -- the homeowners -- who produce plays on Broadway. There's classic, simple seating set into the grass, and a lawn "stage" which artfully conceals the "backstage" area where actors and stagehands might one day congregate.  Like James Doyle's other gardens, this one is formal and traditional with a Russell Page-like modern twist. Maybe a classic for the 21st century.

(images ©Jane Berger / click on images to enlarge)