Bob and landscape designer Ruth Foster tour Mahoney's Garden Center, a local nursery, to discuss the elements of the project house's landscape plan. Foster's focus is on the pieces selected for the English-style garden that will be the centerpiece of the front yard. From the topiary's to the roses and lilacs, Foster offers insight into the style and features of a traditional Colonial-style landscape.
Bob visits the Glen Magna Farm in Danvers, Massachusetts, with Kathy Gianoulos from the Danvers Historical Society. Owned by the Endicott family since the late 1800's, it was named after the Endicott family's ancestral birthplace in England. First stop on the tour is the summerhouse, built in 1793 by Samuel Macintyre. The exterior of the house is designed to look like masonry work, although it is actually wood construction. The back of the house features a beautiful rosegarden, which is a faithful reproduction of the original. Next Bob and Gianoulos tour the Italian 8 garden, a Mediterranean style garden restored in the 1980's. The garden features a magnificent pergola, supported by marble columns that were purchased in the 1930's for $5 a piece. The estate's main house has also been faithfully restored, including the West Wing, which remains the oldest surviving area of the home.
Bob joins John Druley at another of the Quaker Homes that is nearly completed and ready for landscaping. This home is virtually the same as the first-time homebuyer model that Bob visited under construction. Landscaping will be standard for all of the homes with gardens out front, a picket fence and rosebushes, a clamshell driveway, and cobblestone edging. Initially, the septic systems were problematic for Druley since the burden of eight homes with lawns on the groundwater system and adjacent salt ponds presented concerns for the enviromental review board. According to Title 5, denitrification systems costing about $7,000 apiece would be required for each of the homes. Druley proposed reducing the size of the lawns, using low-nitrate fertilizers, and passing the savings on to the two affordable homes in the development. This further reduced the selling price of the homes from $145,000 to $119,900.
Western red cedar was used for the porch ceiling and trellises. Eventually a climbingrose will be grown along the trellis and provide a little privacy on the porch from the busy street. Carpenter Matt Staffier explains how the trellis is constructed using one-inch western red cedar and held together using a lap joint, glue, and brads. Staffier creates a spacer after the first cut is made to fit in the previous groove and act as a guide for the next cut. The cut is then made using a router. The trellis is constructed using half-laps, glued, and nailed into place. The trellis slides into a groove used for the previous trellis on top and secured with chucks at the bottom to hold it in place. The trellis has large squares to let in light and an opening at the top for a hanging plant.
Bob continues his tour of the exterior with landscape designer Ruth Foster. In the Elizabethan-inspired garden in the front of the house she explains the various flowers she has chosen for the outer border and how they are appropriate for Colonial theme. Over near the side of the house we learn more about the more naturalistic garden, a style that dates back to the American Revolution.
Ruth Foster, a landscape consultant, oversees the planting of the perennial flower border in the yard. Smaller plants fill in the front, moving to the tallest flowering plants in back. Foster has chosen deer-resistant plants like summer asters for the front, with echinacea or cone flowers behind. Foster has also selected a vivid, neon autumn joy for the garden. She and Bob look at the early blooming magnolias that have been planted in the yard and the euonomous hedge that will grow to eight or ten feet and turn red in the fall.
