Annuals Add Variety to Terrace Hill Gardens

By Doug Hall

2006

On the grounds at Terrace Hill, three historic garden styles coexist in relative harmony. The pastoral picturesque style of the 19th century is evident in the parklike lawn. Victorian fondness for bright annuals in patterned beds, known as carpet bedding, is seen in the driveway oval and in island beds near the mansions north and east entrances. And a cottage-garden-inspired mix of perennials, shrubs and roses a painterly style popularized at the turn of the 20th century occupies a broad border in the lattice-fenced garden south of the mansion.

Of the three styles, it is the Victorian bedding that keeps Terrace Hill’s Garden Committee busy with spring planning. Because carpet bedding depends on annuals (plants that live for just one growing season) and frost-tender tropicals, it must be replanted every spring. One of the joys of such a garden is the ability to reimagine the decorative patterns and color combinations each time the bed is planted.

In 2006, the long, narrow annual bed in the south garden, which last year featured intertwined ribbons of coleus, will display a more geometric pattern executed in brilliant flower colors. The barbell-shaped bed at the foot of the east porch will get a simple treatment of wax begonias and torenia an attempt to re-create a planting scheme seen in a photograph from the Hubbell era. In the circular fountain bed, frilly coral petunias will take the place of the blue-and-silver annuals of past years. Throughout the grounds, plants with bold foliage, such as castor beans, cannas and elephants ears, will balance the mansion’s over-scaled architecture.

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