Hidden Garden

Home Sweet Home

The first things you notice as you pull up to Anne and Andy Sheldon's home are the windows--not the ones in the house but the ones in the hedge. Mounted on a shelf of clipped Korean boxwoods, they give you a view into the front yard behind, whetting your appetite for the visual feast that awaits.

photo: Herbs, ground covers, flowers, and vines adorn the front entry. They provide year-round color without hiding the attractive house.

A Secret Garden

And what a feast it is! Between the hedge and house lies a secret garden of barely 1,200 square feet that you enter from the driveway. Herbs and flowers spill onto its floor of slate pavers set into gravel. Pots of all sizes and shapes decorate the steps and nestle among the borders. In a corner, chairs and a table beckon you to sit. A few feet away, a fountain gurgles while bearded irises and old roses hang a sweet-scented curtain in the still spring air.

From Lawn to Garden

Things didn't look like this when the Sheldons moved in. "There was a Bermuda grass lawn in front, blue rug creeping junipers, and two lollipop-shaped Burford hollies on each side of the house," recalls Anne. "That was it."

photo: Pansy, geranium, purple alum root, and yellow creeping Jenny provide lots of variety in one container.

Peace & Quiet

First order of business: screening the house and yard from the busy street where neighbors parked. "I didn't want to be sitting in the yard looking at cars," she explains. "Putting in the boxwood hedge created an extended living room." Started from 1-gallon plants, the boxwoods reached 5 feet tall in four years.

photo: Painted to match the house trim, window frames set into the corner of the hedge give a tantalizing glimpse into the garden while also allowing air to pass through. This painted obelisk adds a vertical dimension.

The Perfect Carpet

A new room needed new carpet. Out went grass and junipers; in came annuals, perennials, bulbs, shrubs, and vines. Adding pavers, gravel, a hedge, and a Japanese cryptomeria on one side created a microclimate significantly milder than Atlanta normally is supposed to be. "I can grow all of my Mediterranean cooking herbs--thyme, winter savory, marjoram, rosemary, and bay," Anne says. She also grows chives and parsley.

photo: Golden thyme spreads between and around the pavers, adding color and soft texture.

Inviting You In

Nearly all visitors to the garden come away delighted and amazed. Anne credits its defined shape and small scale. "Often when people put a garden out front, there isn't a structure that contains it, but people can relate to and understand this kind of garden," she observes. "They don't feel it's beyond their capabilities. They feel it's a garden that invites you to come in and sit--one that is lived in, not just looked at."

photo: Love-in-a-mist and Gloriosa Daisy Strain come back year after year from seed.

Tips for Beginners

Here are some suggestions from Anne that you'll find helpful in your garden:

• For easy spring and summer color, plant flowers that come back from seed. Dianthus, violas, larkspurs, poppies, wishbone flowers, coneflowers, and love-in-a-mists seed themselves into the gravel and soil and pop up every spring.
• To reduce watering (especially now in the drought-stricken Southeast), grow plants that need little water, such as rosemary, thyme, bearded irises, and succulents. Use rain barrels to collect water. Most rain barrels aren't pretty, so the couple found some old oak wine casks into which they inserted faucets. "This last rain, we collected about 400 gallons," Anne says.
• Vertical accents work well in a small garden. "You don't want everything at one level," she states. In this garden, clematis vines trained on blue wooden obelisks rise above the hedge and take up little space.
  • Year-round color and architectural interest are important for an entry garden. Grow lots of things in containers. Anne's favorite plants for this include succulents, foliage perennials, and annuals for seasonal color.
• A garden with many different plants can look chaotic without permanent structure. The hedge and pavers supply that here.

"Hidden Garden" is from the April 2008 issue of Southern Living.