Garden Of The Month - Hendrickson Garden
12:00 AM - May 05, 2009
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The front yard landscape of the Hendrickson house does what it is supposed to do: it frames and accentuates a beautiful, stately home. Holly shrubs and other evergreens, neatly clipped, add necessary and tasteful swaths of greenery, gracefully blending forest with architecture. But as functional and attractive as the front yard is, it is not why I’m here.
Alan Hendrickson is a thinking man, an engineer to be exact, and his backyard retreat is a thinking man’s garden. From a design perspective, it makes sense throughout, leading the visitor from one divided outdoor room to the next, each with its own feel and function. The first “room” is the patio, a comfortable space that stretches nearly one half the length of the house. On the far end is a large fireplace of stucco and a complete outdoor kitchen, making the patio both a place to relax and a place to dine. The entire patio/kitchen area is backed by a retaining wall which, along with a narrow perennial border, separates the patio from an upper lawn of perfectly grown ‘Pallisades’ Zoysia grass. Stairs connect the two spaces, and a ‘Champanelle’ grape arbor spans the entry into the lawn. The lawn itself is plenty large for the family’s two boys, Brice and Reed, to play football or soccer, and the surrounding mixed perennial border allows plenty of hiding places for the occasional super hero or even a passing ninja. At the north end of the lawn is a low hedge of boxwood, broken only by an entry into the vegetable garden, a carefully tended patch of raised rows of veggies and arbors of kiwi vines and grapes. At the back of the vegetable garden is a mini conservatory, a classy little greenhouse Allan uses to overwinter his tropicals and get an early start on seasonal vegetable seedlings.
To describe this garden as functional would be a bit of an understatement, and nothing speaks to that function more than Alan’s collection of fruit trees. He seems to be first and foremost a collector of citrus, both in pots and planted in the ground. There are grapefruits, lemons, kumquats, satsumas, and Alan’s favorite, a Ponkan mandarin. I have to admit the first kumquat I ever tasted was plucked from a Meiwa tree in this garden, with special instructions from Alan to pick only the shiniest fruits, as they are the ripest and sweetest. The garden boasts a total of eleven different citrus varieties, most of them bearing fruit in some stage of development on the day I visited. Another of Alan’s passions is growing avocados, and although he’s yet to get any of his trees to fruit (some of them are planted in the ground, doing just fine), they are all blooming this year and will hopefully yield a healthy crop. There are also two varieties of Loquat trees, ‘Big Jim’ and ‘Yahuda’.
The evolution of the backyard from typical suburban rectangle to fully fruitful paradise has been a labor of love for the family. The lawn was once a leach field for an aerobic septic system, and its conversion to grassy oasis was the first project they took on. Since leach fields are built on coarse sand, amending the soil to add nitrogen and organic matter has been a top priority. Later, The Great Outdoors worked with Alan to construct the patio kitchen, retaining walls, and mixed beds and borders throughout. Since 2005 the garden has been mostly complete, with new plants added to the collection here and there. It is obvious the family wanted to create an outdoor world that is a relaxed and comfortable extension of the interior home. It is a retreat, complex and colorful but easy to absorb, attractive to explore. Above all else, Alan’s garden is a place of equal parts form and function. No space is wasted, and every square foot is used for enjoyment, dining, or food production. In an age when prices of so many consumables keep getting bigger, and backyards keep getting smaller, we could all stand to take a lesson from the Hendricksons getting the most food and fun out of the space you have, since they seem to have accomplished just that.
The first photo is culinary ginger. Surprisingly lovely green shade-loving plant. Comes back bigger each year.
The second photo is Owari Satsuma. Supposed to ripen Oct-Nov, but mine ripens Sept/Oct. This is a bit early, and not necessarily good, since the longer they are on the tree the sweeter they get. If you have citrus here, you should be very careful to get varieties that ripen before the first freeze around Dec 1, otherwise you are committed to protecting hanging fruit from freezes. These trees are cold-hardy down to upper teens, but need protection their first 2 or 3 winters to get established. The blossoms are incredibly aromatic. I prefer my other mandarin : ponkan. Although the tree is not thought to be very cold-hardy, the fruit is better. They may disappoint if planted in other than full sun.
Citrus Suggestions:
Fertilize your citrus trees every year in February, before the buds begin to swell, to avoid blossom loss (same rule applies for kiwi vines).
If you live in a wildlife-rich area, grow citrus! Although he struggles with raccoons and possums in his own yard, Alan has yet to lose
citrus fruit to any varmints.
Carica Papaya (female). Dioecious plants, the males and females produce different flowers and different shaped fruits. Difficult to ripen before first freeze, but wow! what an exotic specimen. They will grow fully 15 feet tall in one season. Consider it an tender annual and be prepared to do some debris hauling in the spring.
Dwarf bottlebrush. Great plant! Love the heat and the sun. Works well in a horrible location for me : western-facing wall getting full shade most of the day followed by full-on searing sun. Drought/frost tolerant.
