Lakeville Garden Thrills Its Audience

Never has a landscape played to a more appreciative cheering squad. Talk to Priscilla McCord about her garden, and she overflows with enthusiasm. From the beauty of the bristling hydrangeas to the buzz of the pollinators courting her asters, McCord has all sorts of good things to say about what has grown around her. Actually, she doesnt really have to say a thingsit down to talk with Priscilla McCord in her backyard, and the glow of true love speaks for itself.

Her husband, Alan McCord, is equally smittenin a different sort of way. An abstract expressionist artist, Alan McCord didnt have to think twice about where he might want to put down weekend roots when the time came to look for a second homehe had plenty of blissful memories of the regional rolling hills and august trees in Litchfield County from attending Salisbury School. So thats how the McCords became the proud homeowners of the 10-acre landscape in Lakeville in 1990.

Priscilla McCord was a total novice when she came to the property. Actually, she was a green-wannabe, but had not yet received coaching in the specifics of how to dig in. And she was faced with a blank canvas waiting to be worked on. Meanwhile she yearned to garden.

I always loved gardens, she recollects. But she was working in the city four days a week. I thought: What can I do to really enhance my life? Her answer was right at handshe could study gardening.

When she makes a decision, Priscilla McCord seizes the moment. She asked legendary gardeners Fred and Mary Ann McGourty of Hillside Gardens in Norfolk to mentor her. For the next year, she couldnt wait until her weekly Friday visits interning with the McGourtys and working at their nursery, Hillside Gardens, learning how to plant, divide perennials, amend the soil, and accomplish the other nuts and bolts of making things grow. The garden that sprouted up around the 18th century eyebrow colonial in Lakeville is the result of that focused education with two of the finest designers/plantspeople in the area, but it also has a lot to do with the professionals that collaborated to create the hardscape and make plant selections.

Mary Ann McGourty was a key factor in the design and she steered Priscilla McCord toward the types of plants that would be apropos in borders around the housewith an eye toward performance, color combinations, and season-long interest. Marc Tonan was still in high school at the time, but he worked with the McGourtys and played a key part in installing the McCord garden. Now with his own businessConsolini & Tonan Landscape Design LLChe continues to provide maintenance24 years later.

Meanwhile, Alan McCord had his own battles to wage. He was single-handedly responsible for clearing the hillside that stretched behind the house. At first, suspecting that beauty lay beneath, he whacked a few tenuous paths into the densely overgrown yonder, penetrating trails in a terrain populated by the sorts of botanical bullies that Priscilla calls, heavy bad shrubs.

Sure enough, what he exposed revealed a landscape of gentle curves framing a scenic view. Fifteen years ago, with the help of some earth-moving equipment, he cleared the field entirely to create the sort of rural scene that captures the subtleties of light in these hills and inspires his art. Now, the property boasts 6 cleared acres. I was the gardens, but he was the land, Priscilla likes to say.

Following the field conquest, the McCords put in a poolwhich required a garden all around. Thats when the eye-opener about hydrangeas happened. They started with Annabellewhich was less than satisfactory. The leaves never look good and the flowers droop, Priscilla sums up the essence of her discontent. The switch to Hydrangea paniculata Tardiva brought the sort of results she could applaud.

Actually, the hydrangeas sparked an encore. The time came when the McCords decided to renovate their little eyebrow Colonial to raise the roof and build a second floor, enlarging the height and dimensions of the rooms, and creating an open veranda, all on the existing footprint. Continued...

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Lakeville Garden Thrills Its Audience