Make Your Yard a Work of Art

Gordon and Mary Hayward’s garden designs always begin with people.

“That’s who gardens are for,” Gordon says. “We create places for them to enjoy outdoor living.”

The Haywards’ “people-friendly” designs emphasize views, as well as shade, stress-free maintenance, and balance of structure and informality—a mix recalling the English gardens of Mary’s childhood.

Gordon has designed gardens since retiring from a teaching career in 1984, and his work has been featured in Horticulture and other gardening publications. Mary still teaches, but their combined passion for horticulture has turned the one-and-a-half-acre yard around their farmhouse in Westminster West, Vt., (pop. 800) into a modest work of art. But wherever you live, whatever your skills,

Gordon says, you can have fun making your own yard a showplace.

“We include open space, intimate space, sunny space, shady space, narrow places and broad ones—true variety,” he says, “so everyone who visits the garden can feel comfortable.”

Do try this at home

To evaluate your yard, stand with your back to the door you use most, usually a side or back door.

Identify existing fixtures—trees, perhaps a small structure—that you can use as anchors to link your house to the landscape, Gordon says.

Then take a chair and spend time in various places around the yard to see which lend themselves to outdoor living. “Note the feeling and mood of each, its existing trees, views, and sunlight,” he says. “Think how to link different areas with a pathway.”

The Haywards’ “garden path” departs from a side door toward an old apple tree and leads to five areas that capitalize on the surroundings.

Sit and smell the roses

Visitors pass through a mini-orchard and a tunnel-like arbor covered with purple-leafed beech to discover a raised, stone-paved platform in the middle of perennial beds. A partial enclosure of evergreen shrubs adds privacy.

“Why plant perennials only to walk past them?” Gordon asks. “We place activity areas like this right in their midst so the plants’ fragrance and appearance become part of the experience.”

This concept can be duplicated almost anywhere. The couple applied it to the 15- by-35-foot yard behind their cottage in England’s Cotswolds to create a plant-enveloped outdoor-living area. They pulled up existing lawn and made a circular, stone-paved terrace amidst trees, shrubs, and perennials, “creating an extra ‘room’ where we eat, read the newspaper, and sit surrounded by plants,” Mary says.

Wide horizons

Expanses of field or lawn qualify for Gordon’s “room-with-a-view” treatment. He mowed a curving, 8-foot-wide swath from the gardens’ edge into a meadow where he mowed a small circle around a bench surrounded by three pin oaks. The trees offer a canopy, while the area’s shape draws people back toward the house and gardens, making all feel connected. Even though this space sits in a hayfield, such an area could be sculpted into the edge of a woodland.

Benches enhance outdoor-living space when their design and materials fit a setting’s mood, Gordon says. “They draw people to them and emphasize the best views.”

“Always provide some kind of external support for all types of seating,” Mary says, “such as shrubs, or anything that keeps your back from feeling exposed.”

Rooms without walls

The garden’s inviting outdoor “dining room” nestles under a circle of trees. After dark, spotlights into the trees accentuate arching branches that provide the area’s “ceiling.”

The “floor” is a simple 2-inch-deep sand foundation overlaid with blue-stone slabs. The stone chimney-base of the maple-sugaring house that formerly stood here now holds a container of hosta, ferns, and other shade-loving plants. Low stone walls on two sides enclose the space and provide a “sideboard” for serving.

The Haywards reclaimed one area from space many might never think to use—the back of an old shed. Using its rustic exterior as backdrop, they shaped this location into a fieldstone-paved patio sheltered by a grape arbor whose simple design includes four posts fashioned from bark-covered logs of black locust, a tree indigenous to the region.

With its view of the adjacent meadow, this sitting area’s plantings include the arbor’s grapes, climbing hydrangea on the shed, and herb beds planted in quadrants.

“Although some only stash tools or a compost heap behind them, outbuildings can be the focal point of a garden,” Gordon says.

Overlooked sites include side yards, where even a narrow space can be used to grow something. “Climbing plants don’t require horizontal room and can grow on a trellis or fence, or even be used to cover an unsightly wall or foundation,” Mary says.

Paving and planting the way

Paving materials such as gravel, flags, or stepping stones help define areas and regulate movement between them. The Haywards recommend using just a few different types of materials and simple paving patterns.

Two-foot diameter stepping stones can be integrated into a garden by surrounding them with ground-hugging plants and mosses. Because the stones aren’t always apparent from a distance, it’s useful to embed 6-foot posts or other markers into the ground to mark the entrance to a path. Using your largest stepping stones at the beginning, end, and juncture of paths also helps.

The path from the place where visitors park the car to the door of the house should be broad to eliminate confusion about which door to use. It also should widen to a landing within 6 feet of the door. “It’s inviting to plant either side of the path with perennials or small shrubs so visitors walk through a small garden as they enter,” Mary says.

The Haywards choose plants according to a property’s physical characteristics and a hierarchy that begins with trees, and then add shrubs and perennials.

“Gardens need all three,” Gordon says. “Trees provide vertical structure against the sky as well as a ‘ceiling.’ Shrubs define and enclose space and add fragrance. Perennials are detail plants that provide color and leaf variety, from the smallest, used for edging, to the drama of tall grasses.

“Once you’ve defined the spaces where people will be,” Gordon says, “very often, the plantings you want to have there will simply suggest themselves.”

Garden Tips

The Haywards’ artistry employs techniques and tools all artists value:

Straighten up. Favor straight lines and don’t be afraid to use them. Reserve curves for specific purposes—accommodating shrubs or slowing movement on a path.

Know your moves. Develop a flow plan that defines outdoor-living areas and how you’ll move within garden spaces.

Sight-see. Take advantage of long views, typically the one from the door you use most often, although other areas may provide these, too.

Frame it. Find appealing views and use and prune plants to frame them, or as screening to create separation or divide areas into smaller spaces.

Make an entrance. Use potted plants and garden ornaments to mark entrances. The Haywards incorporate elements that reflect the landscape, such as granite posts at a path’s entrance or rustic log supports in an arbor.

Simplify. Keep forms and shapes simple, elegant, and geometric.

Know your palette. Plant to take full advantage of shady and sunny areas. Look to existing garden materials and trees for cues about color schemes.

New Hampshire writer Phyllis Ring is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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