A Glimpse of the Garden:

A Dream Come True

By Nancy K. Crevier

“A Glimpse Of The Garden” is a miniseries focusing on the heart of a gardener’s work — a special spot, an extraordinary plant, a place of respite, or a place that evokes a heartfelt memory. What is down the garden path of your friends and neighbors? What is down your garden path?

Peggy Jepsen has taken the barren, flowerless landscape that was the property she purchased with her home in 1998, and with an eye to the history that she loves and the skills of friends and family, has created her own “little piece of Heaven” by Hawley Pond.

“I love history. I saw the promise in the house when I bought it, and I knew Mary Hawley had once owned it. Her chauffeur lived here,” said Ms Jepsen. She had also learned in a history of Ram Pasture that town benefactress Mary Hawley had always wanted gardens, and irises by the pond, so Ms Jepsen has worked to make Ms Hawley’s long ago dreams come true.

Peonies heavy with rose-colored flowers, feverfew, spiderwort, bleeding heart, and boxwood created a thick bank of color just below her porch railing, and evergreen topiaries frame the front steps of the South Main Street property. But it is the large garden that fills the field outside the barn that is her greatest source of pride.

Robert Legnini was restoring her barn for her in 2005, said Ms Jepsen, and he recommended the space for what is now a 50-foot by 70-foot garden, planted with not only flowers that would make Mary Hawley smile, but numerous metal sculptures created by her son, Mike Jepsen.

Local garden architect Brid Craddock coordinated the development of the garden, said Ms Jepsen, and then she and her son implemented it. Central to it all is an enormous ram’s head sculpture. Made from scraps of metal pieced together, it is known as “Ramenstein.”

The rectangular garden is divided into quadrants by mulched paths, each one anchored at a corner by a theme.

 “Brid told me, ‘This is the children’s garden,’ because of Mike’s animal sculptures there,” Ms Jepsen said. What might be a dog or a kangaroo, and a stork-like bird with spokes for eyes, as well as a colorful, abstract tower are the focus of this corner, along with thick clumps of spiderwort, boxwood and holly bushes, a mass of coreopsis not yet in bloom, and tiny clusters of purple and red verbena.

On the opposite corner, the garden is still in progress, said Ms Jepsen. A stone bust of Hermes is hidden behind a pile of mulch, and has yet to be lifted to a pedestal there. A cluster of sundrop primrose already grows happily, though, next to one of several antique stone troughs arranged throughout the garden.

At the other end of the garden, one corner is filled with more spiderwort and feverfew, and bordered by boxwood and holly. “Squares” is the theme of this corner, with every sculpture featuring squares, and even the trough placed there of that shape.

The fourth corner is the pyramid corner. There, a tall open-weave obelisk made from sheet metal provides a trellis for the pink Mandeville vine growing within its confines. Two triangular forms, also of sheet metal, and a thick plastic pyramid are the only other things “growing” in this garden.

Ms Jepsen did not forget Mary Hawley’s wish for iris when planning the gardening. At least 50 feet on either side of the garden, running from corner to corner and broken up only by antique gates halfway down, is a swathe of dark purple, as the Siberian iris burst into blossom.

“The iris just love it here,” said Ms Jepsen. “They grow easily and spread, and are so beautiful. When I first saw these iris [at the garden center] I said, ‘If I could only have a whole bunch of those…’”

They are not planted at the edge of the pond, as Mary Hawley may have imagined, but the proximity is enough to be more than a tip of the hat to the early 20th Century Newtown woman. Hawley Pond forms a serene backdrop to the purple iris, when viewed from any point in the garden.

The sculpture and iris garden give Ms Jepsen a peaceful place in which to begin her day.

“I come down here early nearly every morning,” she said. “It’s something nice to come into and walk around in.”

That is what is down the garden path in Peggy Jepsen’s garden.

For more pictures of Ms Jepsen’s gardens, please see the slideshow at www.newtownbee.com (this story can be found under the Features tab). This garden will be part of the Newtown Historical Society House and Garden Tour on June 30.