The Landscape Diaries:
Garden of Obsession

is available on the New York Botanical Garden’s website
under “In Celebration of Kiku.”

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What reviewers are saying

While I find inspiration in myriad things, two of the most likely sources are great friends and great books. These two publications, both full of passion and artistry, have given me some wonderful ideas for my gardens. Perhaps they will strike a chord with you as well.

THE LANDSCAPE DIARIES: GARDEN OF OBSESSION
Gayatri Carole Rocherolle / RUDER FINN PRESS

Myron Porto, our horticulturist, was invited by the Southern Plant Conference to give a lecture and slide presentation entitled “Rare and Unusual Acer palmatum Cultivars." Other speakers included Michael Dirr and Barry Yinger. The conference was organized by the renowned plantsman, Don Shadow, of Shadow Nursery.

Article from House & Garden magazine, March 2006

GROUND CONTROL
by Carol Williams

THE WILD VARIETY OF FLORA AND FAUNA ON A WESTCHESTER ESTATE IS TAMED INTO A PEACEABLE KINGDOM BY DESIGNERS JEROME AND CAROLE ROCHEROLLE

In a 54-acre property just north of New York City, climbing hydrangeas rise 50 feet up the trunks of tulip trees. A gray goose with a green bill and pink legs guides visitors through a grove of scarlet viburnums, and white wallabies hop beneath golden larches. Such a landscape may sound like pure fantasy, but the real wonder is that it seems, almost, natural: like a happy dream.

Michael and Judy Steinhardt’s garden is an extreme case of two, often contradictory, desires familiar to many gardeners: the impulse to collect and the long for harmony. That this reconciliation has been achieved is the result of the long collaboration between Michael Steinhardt, whose enthusiasm for the variety of the plant and animal worlds is boundless, and his designers, Jerome and Carole Rocherolle, whose quest is for a dynamic unity in the landscape. Judy Steinhardt is the tireless advocate for enjoyment, anchoring this Eden in family life.

The Steinhardts have lived at the site since 1978. They acquired 28 acres of hillside with an orchard, a brook, and a contemporary house, to which they added a modest but elegant wing, designed by Myron Goldfinger. Later they acquired two adjoining parcels surrounding a crumbling house, built in the 1920s as Theodore Dreiser's retreat.

By his own account, Michael Steinhardt began as a "gardening primitive." The orchard drew him first. He grew many varieties of apples and berries to harvest and eat, and grapes for wine. These ventures led inexorably to a desire to stay up late on winter nights studying obscure catalogs in search of the rare and strange, to bonds of mutual support with the New York and Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and to a compulsion to push, in every sense, the boundaries of what might be possible in a Westchester garden.

When Jerome and Carole Rocherolle began work at the garden in 1988, the collecting "problem" - and extraordinary opportunity - had already set in. Quantities of plants had been set out with little meaningful connection between them or with the site. How to make sense of it all?

Fortunately, the Rocherolles are the sort of designers made nervous by master plans. They prefer working organically, over time, with what is at hand. An initial challenge was a collection of 50 Japanese maples, each one a different cultivar, lined up in rows. Since Japanese maples are understory trees, happiest in light filtered through high canopy trees, the Rocherolles' inspiration was to carve out a home for them in the already existing mature native forest of tulip trees, swamp maples, and black birch.

Before moving the maples, they thinned five acres of forest, revoving some trees and limbing others. Pine-needle-covered paths were carefully placed an existing wet spots and streams traversed by graceful bridges.

Since the initial planting of 50 maples, an additional 300 different cultivars have been added and grouped in groves, with concern for aesthetics as much as taxonomy. Beneath the maples is a ground cover of moss and sequences of flowering woodland plants - massed hellebores, bloodroot, woodland peonies - carefully managed by Jerome Rocherolle's sister, Caroline, who designed the flower plantings throughout the garden. In summer the climbing hydrangeas bloom against the dark trunks of limbed-up tulip trees. In fall they provide a mysterious golden-leafed backdrop to the brilliance of the maples.

The Rocherolles have learned to handle the Steinhardts' other plant collections (yellow magnolias, ferns, witch hazels, tree peonies, and more) with similar grace throughout the site. Working with existing slopes, woodland, and meadows, they have made a series of interconnected environments. In clearings, in the orchard and paddocks, and around the ponds, even the rarest plants appear as integrated elements of a single landscape.

Since the site is so large, Caroline Rocherolle uses flowers on a big scale: numerous meadows of single plantings that change sequentially over the seasons. A meadow of sheep's fescue is interplanted with scarlet poppies. One of the loveliest flowering areas is around the carefully preserved stone ruins of the Dreiser house, which in summer is deep in roses, salvias, and sunflowers.

"Planting in" what has become a similarly encyclopedic collection of animals is another landscape challenge. As with his flora, Steinhardt's animal collection began humbly, when he started to stock a pond with snails and minnows. This led to larger fish, to ducks, to one of the world's largest private waterfowl collections, and to cranes and peacocks. The aviary is two flowing ponds (one assiduously protected by black swans) surrounded by viburnumS and crape myrtles and covered by a giant free-form net tent. Jewellike fowls busily conduct their lives; full nesting boxes attest to their health and happiness.

An energetic Vietnamese pond deer, two feet tall and very appealing, was originally acquired to accompany the ducks. Instead, it became the genesis of an animal collection that now includes zebras, zonkeys (a cross between a donkey and a zebra), various species of llamas, dromedaries, Bactrian camels, and lemurs - to name only a few species. "The children love them," says Steinhardt. "Something is always having babies."

Integrating large exotic animals and landscape plants takes skill. The plants may poison the animals, and the animals will almost certainly destroy the plants. The Rocherolles resolve this difficulty by creating space between the grassy paddocks, so that the animals can be surrounded by trees and shrubs without getting too close. Judy Steinhardt and the Rocherolles choose shrubs and trees with large leaves and startling flowers - such as catalpas, silk trees, and umbrella magnolias - that suit the exotic character of the fauna.

A lodge built by the Steinhardts and designed by New York architect Jacquelin T. Robertson on the newer property has now become their home. Paddocks for the animals come within a few feet of the house, so the Steinhardts' breakfast is sometimes observed by alpacas and Sicilian donkeys. Peacocks - some pure white - scratch up the labels of alpine plants, but a happy resolution to even this difficulty will surely be found.

THE MIX: HOW IT WORKS

Plant collectors are often ruled by passion rather than aesthetics. Michael Steinhardt and his designers, Jerome and Carole Rocherolle, strive to organize the collections in this 54-acre property into a pleasing whole instead of a horticultural mishmash.

GROUPING The plants are arranged thematically, most often by genus. A collection of Japanese maples would lose its impact if spread out over the property instead of located in a distinct area. In such a setting, the subtle attributes of the different species and cultivars can more easily be compared.

MASS PLANTING Collectors often grow one or two of a plant before moving on to acquire new species. On their large property, the Steinhardts understand that their prized species need to be planted in great masses for maximum impact.

CREATING A SCENE Gardens by passionate collectors often look like a plant nursery. The Rocherolles make sure that even the most unusual species is sited unobtrusively. The family’s menagerie of animals also helps to complete the illusion of the garden as an idealized landscape.