^B^ovation of the 

 Rock Garden at The Fells 



William Noble 



J'ust how does one go about renovating a seventy- 

 year-old rock garden? Next to the perennial bor- 

 der, a rock garden must be the most difficult type 

 of garden to maintain over time. Some plants succeed 

 overly well, while others, slow to establish, collapse after 

 just a short stretch of unfavorable weather. A few of us 

 have probably had the misfortune of losing a garden af- 

 ter only a couple years of disinterest. This article is 

 about the challenges and techniques encountered in re- 

 viving an established, but now flawed, rock garden. 



Clarence Hay began his rock garden at The Fells by 

 adding rocks and plants to a rocky hillside in Newbury, 

 New Hampshire, in 1926. Three years later, he embarked 

 upon a major campaign of building and planting a 35,000- 

 square foot rock garden which spilled down the hillside 

 toward the shore of Lake Sunapee. For a few glorious 

 years in the 1930s, he experimented with over 400 variet- 

 ies of alpine and rock garden plants. Following World 

 War 11, he and his staff found it impossible to keep up 

 with the needs of such an ambitious garden and the 

 plant palette was gradually reduced to those plants that 

 could fend for themselves. 



In his article "Gardening with Granite in the North", 

 Hay tried to "visualize the site if it were abandoned, 

 which must happen one of these days, and left to shift 

 for itself. At first, the grasses would come in everywhere, 

 the heather would survive in competition with the weeds. 

 All our carefully nurtured rarities would disappear within 

 a few years. But beyond all this, 1 am convinced that the 

 Creator in His infinite wisdom designed our part of New 

 England for forests. It is a constant uphill fight to keep 

 the trees from engulfing us. Every year, countless thou- 

 sands of seedlings of maple, birch, and white pine crop 

 up in our gardens, and, if neglected, would soon take 

 over and revert to the forest primeval." He knew his gar- 

 den well Our direst enemies are still the weed trees and 

 grasses. Fortunately, since Hay's death in 1969, gardeners 

 like Al Kathan have been able to fight the good fight and 

 maintain the soul of the garden. 



Beginning three years ago the Garden Conservancy 

 and a group of volunteer gardeners began attending to 

 the effects of many years of deferred maintenance. We 

 started by pulling out those thousands of tree seedlings. 



The larger weed trees were pulled out by tractor and chain. 

 A Weed Wrench was used to pull out woody seedlings of 

 1/2" to 1 1/2 inches. IVlost of our efforts in the first two 

 years were spent on the larger landscape, but certain im- 

 mediate measures were taken in the rock garden: the leak- 

 ing lily pool was patched and unsteady stone steps secured. 



Eventually we began to know the garden by working in 

 it and discovering what made it work as well as its fail- 

 ings. Preservation planning helps focus one's thinking 

 about a garden through the process of documenting and 

 assessing it. Photography, measured drawings, and a 

 plant inventory are a few of the tools we have used to 

 date. By documenting the garden, we will be able to 

 plan for its preservation as well as to tell its story to rock 

 garden enthusiasts and the general public. This process 

 takes time and will ultimately help us solve the problem 

 as to how the garden should look and what plants it will 

 display. Yet we must also continue to care for the garden 

 and work with it. 



In the summer of 1995 we began renovating extensive 

 portions of the garden. A few previously disturbed and 

 failed areas were cleared of all remaining plants. Other 

 areas were more selectively weeded. Some of the most 

 aggressive plants in the garden were a part of the origi- 

 nal planting scheme, Oeranmm sanguineum being the 

 stubbornnest. Some of the other herbaceous transgres- 

 sors are the alliums and hay-scented ferns. Barberry, 

 crabapple, and cotoneaster seedlings were as numerous 

 as the maples, birches, and white pine. 



One of the more successful areas is the low massing of 

 gaultheria, vaccinium, and mosses planted along the 

 stream which runs down the middle of the garden. Hay 

 was especially fond of Vaccinium vitisidaea var. minus, which 

 is evergreen and "without becoming a nuisance, spreads 

 everywhere in sun and shade, in moss and even under 

 low junipers." This section has been gone over with a 

 small hand fork that loosens soil so that every last piece 

 of weed root or rhizome may be picked out. Equisetum 

 moved along the stream and into the beds. We have at- 

 tacked it by digging out the stream bed and removing 

 the rock and soil beyond the depth of its roots. The soil 

 was carted away (and not placed on the compost pile) 

 and the rocks left alongside the stream in a pattern fol- 



APRIL ♦ MAY 1996 



23 



