During his 40-year career as a
garden writer and photographer, Derek Fell has designed numerous garden spaces,
many involving his wife Carolyn. The best example of their work can be seen at
their home, historic Cedaridge Farm, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. There, they
have designed more than twenty theme areas, including shade gardens, sunny
perennial borders, tapestry gardens involving trees and shrubs, a cottage
garden, herb garden, cutting garden and an ambitious water garden.
Derek worked as a consultant on
garden design to the White House during the Gerald Ford Administration. Derek
designed Ford's 'Win' garden, following his 'Win Speech', advising the nation
ten ways to fight inflation.
Many garden designs by Derek Fell
have been implemented without inspecting the site. The great late architect
Frank Lloyd Wright designed beautiful homes for his clients, entirely from
photographs without the need for a site inspection.
Fell's garden spaces have been
featured in newspapers, magazines, books and also on television, including
Architectural Digest, Gardens Illustrated, The Garden (the magazine of the
Royal Horticultural Society), Country Gardens, HGTV, QVC and PBS.
Derek has authored more than sixty
books and garden calendars, including 550 Home Landscaping Ideas (Simon &
Schuster), The Encyclopedia of Garden Design (Firefly Books), The Complete
Garden Planning Manual (Friedman), Garden Accents (Henry Holt) and Home
Landscaping (Simon & Schuster).
Curb appeal and ambiance are
important to brighten up your propoerty or prepare it for sale. Feel free to
ask Derek any garden related questions regardless of how big or small.
SOME GARDEN TYPES
Water Garden. Water is the music of
nature. It can be tricked over stones, cascaded from a great height so its
crashes onto rocks. It can fall in a solid sheet or as silver threads. A
beautiful water garden with waterfalls and stepping stones can be located in
sunlight or shade. The water garden shown here is located at Cedaridge Farm. It
includes a pool for dipping, and it features both a collection of koi and hardy
water lilies. A popular water garden design features a koi pool fed by a series
of waterfalls, and the water re-circulated through filters to keep the water
clear.
Sunny Perennial Border. This can be
formal or informal, square, rectangular, round and kidney shaped, in the form
of an island bed or backed against a decorative hedge, wall or fence. Plants
can be chosen to produce a parade of color through all the seasons, or concentrated
for a particular season. Color themes can be polychromatic like a rainbow,
monochromatic (for example all white - perfect for a wedding), or it can
feature an Impressionist color harmony, such as yellow and purple; orange and
blue; red, pink and silver; blue, pink and white; even black and white or black
and orange (one of Monet's favorites). A popular perennial garden design is two
parallel border with a grass path leading to a focal point such as a sculpture
or gazebo.
Tropical Garden. You do not need to
live in a frost-free area to have a beautiful tropical garden. At Cedaridge
Farm we have two - one is a tribute to the design philosophy of the late
Roberto Burle Marx, who designed dramatic tropical gardens around Rio. It is in
a lightly shaded area and features plants that are hardy (like 'Sum &
Substance' hosta) but look tropical and tender plants that are tender (like
banana trees and tree ferns) that either need moving indoors during winter or
can be discarded like annuals at the end of the season. Our second tropical
space is a patio with tropical plants grown in containers.
Shade Gardens. We design two kinds
of shade gardens - one where the plants provide mostly foliage interest (like
ferns, hostas, heuchera and hakone grass), and plants that flower well (like
impatiens, coleus, and lilies), or a combination of the two.
Woodland Garden. Whether you have
existing woodland or you need to create a woodland from scratch, the result can
be sensational. Decide whether you want deciduous trees that provide fall color
or evergreens that stay green all winter, or a mixture. At Cedaridge we made a
'cathedral' garden where the existing trees are trimmed high so the trunks look
like the columns of a cathedral, and the branches arch out to meet overhead
like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. Below, we provide two more layers of
interest, at ground level and the under-story.
Vegetable Garden. We can design you
an easy-care garden of raised beds where vegetables are planted in blocks or an
edible landscape where edibles are grown for ornamental effect. We can provide
the plan for a garden that was approved for the White house during the Ford
Administration where Derek Fell worked as a garden consultant. Derek Fell's
book, "Vegetables - How to Select, Grow & Enjoy", won a best book
award from the Garden Writers Association.
Herb Garden. The herb garden at
Cedaridge Farm is a 'quadrant design', feature in numerous calendars and books,
including Derek Fell's 'Herb Gardening for Beginners.' We can also provide a
cartwheel design or a parterre herb garden for bountiful harvests of fresh
herbs. The Herb Garden can also do double-duty as a vegetable garden.
Cutting Garden. The cutting garden
at Cedaridge Farm features bulbs such as tulips and daffodils for spring, and
ever-blooming annuals to follow the bulbs so armloads of flowers can be
harvested from April through October.
Victorian Garden. A garden with
romantic overtones! Imagine a white gazebo framed by mostly white flowers for a
wedding in the family. Or choose from among several color harmonies, such as
yellow and blue, red, pink and silver, or blue, pink and white.
Cottage Garden. You don't need a
cottage to have a cottage garden. But if you do, such as a guest cottage, why
not wrap it in shrub roses and climbers, plus those delightful English cottage
garden plants like poppies, sunflowers and pinks. We also like to include
plants to attract butterflies and hummingbirds.
Stream Garden. Lucky you if you have
an existing stream to be landscaped. At Cedaridge Farm we have a stream, but
when we moved here it was overgrown with poison ivy and brambles. Today it is
criss-crossed with bridges, and beds of moisture-loving plants like astilbe and
water iris. If you don't have a stream, but would like one, we can create a
design where the water is re-circulated along one that's man-made but looks
natural.
Orchard. You don't need a lot of
space for a productive orchard. By making the right choices, fruit trees can be
grown in containers or espaliered against fences and walls to save space.
Peaches and apples can be trained over arbors. Just a few plants of small
fruits like strawberries and raspberries can be highly productive.
Bog Garden. Ideal for soils that
tend to remain moist all season, bog gardens can be extremely colorful and
highly imaginative, incorporating stepping stones and bridges to cross wet
areas, and growing some of nature's most diverse plant families, such as water
iris, Japanese primroses, astilbe and waterlilies.
Japanese Garden. The problem with
many Japanese gardens is a tendency to use pseudo-Japanese elements such as
Chinese dragons. Derek Fell has twice traveled to Japan, has written
award-winning articles about Japanese garden design, and has the experience to
design authentic-looking spaces in the Japanese tradition using elements of Zen
or Feng Shui, or a combination of the two disciplines to create a magical
space.
Italian Garden. Although Italian
gardens can be highly ostentatious, requiring steep slopes to achieve the best
effect, like the Villa d'Este, near Rome, small spaces can achieve the aura of
an Italian garden. Derek Fell has not only visited some of the finest Italian
Gardens, such as La Mortola on the Italian coast, and Boboli overlooking
Florence, he has toured and photographed the Vatican Gardens.
French Formal Garden. The elaborate
style of Versailles Palace and Vaux le Vicompte, may be beyond your means, but
elements of French garden design, such as a parterre garden, can be
incorporated in small spaces.
Monet's Garden. This beautiful
artist's garden north of Paris contains more than a hundred special planting
ideas to create what Monet considered his greatest work of art. Moreover, his
planting ideas have undoubtedly inspired more new garden design than any other
garden. Monet's arched bridge, his waterlily pond, his arches leading to the
entrance of his house, and his color harmonies are just some examples of
Monet's innovation that people today like to emulate.
Tapestry Garden (Trees &
Shrubs). The great French Impressionist artist, Paul Cezanne's garden, in
Provence, is composed mostly of trees and shrubs, not only as a labor saving
device, but to provide a tapestry of color from leaf colors, leaf texture and
leaf shapes. What could be more appealing than to look out of a window of your
home at a rich foliage panorama, including all shades of green from light green
to dark-green, plus blue, silver, gold, bronze?
Hillside Garden. Even dry hillsides
can make beautiful rock gardens, with paths twisting and turning in a zig-zag
to create a visual adventure from the top of the slope to the bottom. They can
be terraced and threaded with streams to create waterfalls and planted with
some of nature's most beautiful plant forms. Bridges, benches and belvedere are
some of the structural elements that can add interest to a hillside.
