Around The Garden
Most gardeners, heaven knows, are happy enough if their perennials reappear, their shrubs flourish, the grass gets mown, and the deer dine elsewhere. They're not too sure of their plant names or their garden lore, they're just delighted "that pink rose" has now covered the front porch.
But out there in the East End undergrowth are the plant professionals, the obsessed, the ones with the sharp clippers and a command of Latin names that sounds as if they're reciting Caesar's "Gallic Wars."
Among these you can count Carol Mercer and her partner Lisa Verderosa, who run "The Secret Garden" landscaping company from an office surrounded by Mrs. Mercer's garden on Ocean Avenue in East Hampton.
Dance To Landscape
"I never intended to be a landscaper," said Mrs. Mercer, who started her working life as a DeMille dancer in such movies as "Oklahoma." She then became an artists' and photographers' representative and a flower arranger for both Presidents Reagan and Bush.
When she married and settled in East Hampton, she took a design course with the New York Botanical Garden so that she could design her own garden.
"People would see my garden and ask me to come and look at theirs and I would be standing around for a couple of hours giving free advice. After a while I thought - What am I doing?"
"Plant Nuts"
She started the Secret Garden in 1986 with a friend called Fern and the very first year they won two medals at the New York Flower show. Mrs. Mercer was well and truly hooked. Her first partner moved on and she has been with Ms. Verderosa (who also has a serendipitous name, meaning green rose) for nine years.
"We're both plant nuts."
And notwithstanding the initial impact of a spectacular view across sloping lawns to Hook Pond and the ocean and dunes beyond, this is a plantswoman's garden. Its main impact is not immediately around the house but unfolds as you tour the periphery, as one unusual plant follows another.
There's a big blue swimming pool near the house, which calls for strong compensatory plantings. Anyway, says Mrs. Mercer, "I don't like those sissy gardens, all pink and white and blue. I think every color goes with everything if it's done right."
Behind a deep bed, clematis and climbing roses romp up a backdrop of arborvitae. The bed sports poppies and peonies, the vivid burgundy leaves of perilla, arisaema Bowle's Mauve, rock roses, pale and dark pink salvias, the burgundy Geranium sanabor, tri-colored sage and bronze fennel, the unusual pink spears of Phlomis tuberosa and the splendid glaucous blue foliage and pink flowers of Rosa rubrifolia.
Not to mention lupines and foxgloves, phlox and euphorbia, and, in the planters on the other side of the pool, a brilliant purple bougainvillea.
Nothing namby pamby about this planting.
Varied Geraniums
The mood changes as you walk under a monumental weeping willow to reach a partly shaded garden and a charming picket-fenced vegetable and cutting garden. As the two gardeners led a tour around the garden, the Latin names were coming like machine gun fire, with only one in 10 being legibly transcribed. Mercifully for those plant lovers who visit this garden, a regular on tours, most of the plants are clearly tagged.
There are dozens of different geraniums, some upright, some more spreading - Cedric Morris, Lily Lovell, Langthorne's Blue - many aquilegias, including a variegated form and one called Green Apples, yellow thalictrum, Chrysanthemum macriphyllum, a huge white aconitum, and anthriscus Raven's Wing, a little cow parsley with black foliage.
Mrs. Mercer and Ms. Verderosa are inveterate travelers in search of plants and inspiration and they spotted this plant growing by a garden wall in England. They slammed on the brakes, asked if they could look around the garden, and, well, somehow or other its offspring is now growing in East Hampton.
By the time you have reached the fenced garden, with its David Austin roses, herbs, trellised sweet peas and hops, and beds of wildly different salvias, the atmosphere of the garden has turned downright romantic. It is reached through a wisteria-laden archway and overlooked by an old gray bench, half-buried in a weeping silver pear, ferns, and the roses Abraham Derby and Graham Thomas.
Beyond the cutting garden lies a narrow creek opening up to Hook Pond where a large reptile - either a water snake or perhaps a snapping turtle - could be seen through the banks of Siberian iris, slowly swimming in the shallows.
By The Creek
The creek is bordered by a deep bed of damp-loving plants. There are elegant grasses like pennisetum Burgundy Giant, thistles, blue sisyrinchiums, a six-foot angelica, and the huge leaves of petacites. As elsewhere, the emphasis is on texture and foliage interest, like the strange toothed blackish-purple leaves of Ligularia dentata Desdemona and a vast clump of bronze-leafed lysimachia.
The heraculum, a plant with attractive foliage, had to be moved to the back of the bed because, like euphorbia and rue, it causes skin rashes.
"We put a big sign saying 'Don't Touch,' but everyone did anyway."
A Shady Spot
Not only is this garden full of rare and interesting plants, they are all incredibly lush and healthy-looking. But asked how they achieve this, the answer was top-dressing in fall and that's it (except for the roses). Not a satisfactory answer - plenty of gardeners top-dress in fall, but not many end up with gardens looking like this.
At the completion of a full circle of the garden is the final romantic touch - a Japanese rock, fern, and moss garden constructed beneath a grove of soaring maples. It's the perfect, peaceful, shady spot to rest after an impressive and slightly intimidating garden tour.