A garden is never quite finished. And if it were, what fun would that be? That’s Robbe and Larry Buescher’s sentiment.
They have lived and gardened at the same Lincolnshire home for more than 40 years. Nearly three decades ago, they looked long and hard at their half-acre lot and transformed much of the back-yard turf into a woodland garden.
Come spring, they stroll along the soft, giving wood-chip path to enjoy drifts of flowering shrubs or migrating songbirds in the tree canopy overhead. Or they can watch wildlife up close from their gazebo.
“We’ve gotten away from most of the grass except in the front yard,” Larry Buescher says.
But they still had one problem area: a dry, impossibly shady side yard. The few plants that struggled there competed for sunlight. Several mature maples and oaks quickly soaked up moisture. Such an area is the bane of the most patient gardeners. “This one area was nothing but a dustbowl after June,” Buescher says. To make matters worse, when they looked at the garden from indoors, their eyes were drawn to a nearby parked car, a funky focal point at best.
“We had to do something,” Robbe Buescher says. But landscapers were at a loss.
So the Bueschers set out researching, reading, visiting gardens, crafting trellises, selecting stones and planting. The process took two years, and their efforts resulted in a sophisticated Japanese-influenced garden that garnered the Glorious Gardens Contest 2001 award for Best Shade Garden.
The garden gets its structure from trellises that resemble a series of open screens and from carefully arranged areas of stone that are intended to suggest water. An area of pea gravel is raked in patterns that evoke waves around rocks that represent mountains. Nearby, a 60-foot-long path of river rock and stepping stones suggests a dry creek bed.
And a thoughtfully placed bench allows the couple to enjoy the softscape–a delicate Japanese maple, astilbes, ferns, rhododendrons and a large bed of bright green moss.
“As soon as the snow is gone, you have lots of green and the garden has a very open feel to it,” Robbe Buescher says.
Trips to Japan and to the Japanese garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe provided the inspiration. In the first phase, the couple selected stones and 1 1/2 cubic yards of pea gravel. Larry Buescher made a special V-shaped cedar rake to comb the gravel. The graphic designer also fashioned the redwood trellis panels and made a bamboo screen.
The couple began planting during the next year. “I wanted green and we couldn’t grow grass, so I says, `Let’s build a moss garden,’ ” Robbe Buescher says.
It was a tricky business, nurturing a 33-by-24-foot area of moss. Much of it came from the garden of a nearby friend. The Bueschers mounded the soil for a rolling, natural look and applied powdered milk to help acidify it, which Robbe Buescher says helps the moss adapt. Small squares of moss, with local soil attached, were carefully placed on top.
“I’d water it daily and pull out every blade of grass and weeds,” she says.
They added a Japanese maple with finely cut leaves; ostrich ferns; Japanese painted ferns; hardy azaleas (Rhododenron poukhanensis); Rhododendron roseum `Elegans’; Tsuga diversifolia (Northern Japanese hemlock); ajuga; and hostas.
The garden “has a very calming element to it. It’s organized, but it can look like it’s been there for a long time,” Larry Buescher says.
Contest judge Galen Gates of the Chicago Botanic Garden says, “It’s a very nice balance between stone and plants. And it’s critical to put small-scale trees such as their Japanese maple in the understory, so [their leaves] don’t burn.”
It’s by no means a maintenance-free garden. Robbe Buescher routinely picks up acorns, twigs and leaves off the moss and pulls seedling trees before they get established. The area receives about six hours of dappled sunlight in midsummer and requires watering when the weather turns hot or there is not enough rain. The pea gravel is raked a few times a week to keep it looking tidy.
But it’s worth the work. “It’s our contemplative garden. I like the beauty of it, and to me it completes our yard,” Robbe Buescher says.
Tips for creating a landscape in shade
Robbe and Larry Buescher share some secrets they learned from creating their award-winning shade garden:
– “The garden should be an extension of yourself. If you want formality and your house is decorated like that, make your garden the same. You can use shade-tolerant plants in a formal setting,” Robbe Buescher says.
– Consider the view from indoors. The Bueschers’ office looked onto the shade garden and Buescher wanted to look into an inviting space year-round.
– When using rocks, don’t simply plop them on the ground. Select them carefully and “plant” them at just the right height to make them look like they always have been there.
– If large trees cast excessive shade, consider having them trimmed to allow more sunlight to reach the ground.
– Ask if plants are grown locally. The Bueschers found that area-grown plants had a better chance of surviving and thriving.
– Get to know your yard, from the amount of sunlight to the moisture plants receive. Experiment with different plants.
– “Be patient. It takes a lot of time to grow moss,” Buescher says. Don’t plant moss where it would receive foot traffic.
– Try doing it yourself. Landscapers were consulted about what might be done with the seemingly impossible shady nook, but “they never could come up with a solution, so we did,” Buescher says.
– Check these out: “Zen Gardening” by Sunniva Harte (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $30) and “Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts, and Other Miniatures” by George Schenk (Timber Press, $34.95).
— Nina Koziol
