When we were children, the one room schoolhouse in Howard Valley enchanted us. Imagine attending this cozy little school we called the “ABC House” for the letters affixed to the front! It was a landmark as we navigated through town. Though it’s no longer a schoolhouse, it’s still enchanting. Owner Penny Newbury has preserved its most charming aspects – the blackboard, pegs for coats, a school bell, the ‘ABC’. She has also cultivated one of the most charming gardens in town, clearing the woodlands for a spacious lawn, excavating and terracing the bank, repurposing the many unearthed rocks to create a garden of layers, of nooks and crevices, of stepping stone stairs and paths, of rounding corners to new discoveries, all making this garden magic.
In early spring, the white, yellow and golden daffodils flare among the boulders and along the stonewalls, rambling south of the house, separating the property from the northern neighbor, terracing the upper gardens. These mingle with small clumps of pulmonaria, pink buds opening to bright blue blossoms, and ivory and plum cups of hellabores, all rising on the slope with the glossy foliage of wild ginger and burgundy ajuga. A window box brimming with alyssum sings against the red clapboards of the house, underlined with the dripping bells of variegated Solomon’s seal. A path winds its way to the distance, crosses a bridge over a stream where skunk cabbage is unfurling, and leads to the glassy saucer of a pond, its rim waiting to fill with the sedges and cattails of summer.
Later in the season, orange narcissus replace the daffodils, lilacs scent the door yard, skirted with pastel creeping phlox, the azure blossoms of woodland phlox and forget-me-nots carpet a red azalea, and the pink buds of a crab apple, opening to a profusion of white flowers, greet visitors. A collection of azaleas — pink, white, mauve, salmon, and rose – decorates the southern bank and to the north, azaleas and rhododendrons mark the entrance of the old road which students living in the farms on South Bigelow used to walk to school. A shady nook on the opposite side, hosting hostas and ferns, further emphasizes the old lane.
The stepping stones and stairs of the terraces are most magical in late spring. The magenta blossoms of scented geranium form a ruffle beneath the terrace along with the frosted leaves of lamium. A spurt of candy tuft sparkles at the top of one staircase opposite a heavenly blue cloud of amsonia. Gold and green creeping Jenny and hens and chicks cushion the stairs where sprays of cerastium’s silvery leaves soften the steps, and wands of bleeding hearts spurt from the crevices. This garden is an iris paradise: miniature irises, yellow flags, bearded, and Siberians. Old fashioned varieties, purple with golden beards and yellow brushed with mahogany falls decorate the front of the house. Pale to deep Siberian irises dance around a lavender rhododendron and the Korean lilac perfuming the air. Bushels of lush peonies complete the compositions.
In summertime, a hydrangea cloaked in ivory flowers greets visitors on one side of the driveway and on the other, a garden glows with cups of pink mallow, plates of ‘moonshine’ yarrow, blue spires of veronica, a deep red dahlia, and a floor of ajuga with pink, cream and mint green leaves. Clouds of catnip and carpets of lamb’s ear underscore the front of the house, the window boxes are stuffed with pink begonias, colorful impatiens fill urns, and sparkling white petunias line the brick walk to the door, where a red rose climbs a trellis above the crimson spears of astilbes. In the shade garden, the whiskery, beige fronds of goatsbeard float over an assortment of ferns and hostas.
Lilies are everywhere, a golden lily with a crimson stripe, a lemon yellow flushed tangerine, a cantaloupe colored with a red throat, a crimson. At the front of the house, sunset colored lilies complement dark raspberry bottlebrush and scarlet crocosmia and form a ring around the rusty striations of the paper bark maple. South of the entrance, a peach colored lily enhances the gentle tones of a yellow helianthus and the ivory bells of the woodland digitalis. Orange lilies are scattered across the top of the hill and along the wall where they partner with scarlet bee balm and gold flowering sedum. Along the terrace, a six foot tall oriental lily, creamy yellow with a pink stripe, is a focal point among clumps of golden rudbeckia, ribbons of sunny coreopsis, burnt orange and pale yellow lilies.The terrace is also speckled with pink and white phlox complementing the wine spikes of bee balm, purple liatrus stalks, and bright pink silenes. A hollyhock with pale yellow saucers reigns supreme over a flurry of pale yellow coreopsis. White and yellow potentilla flank the stairs where rose and pink astilbes ascend the bank. Mullein pinks line a path toward persecaria, a stunning six foot sweep of raspberry spires.
The circular garden on the crest of the hill hosts peach lilies, yellow coreopsis, and lush dahlias. This area is called the “bee yard” for its several hives. “I have names for all the gardens because I keep a garden journal and I have to know what is where,” Penny explains. The garden over the wall is named ‘Ursula’s Garden’ for the gravestone with Mrs. Ursula Tudor’s name on it. Penny’s neighbor salvaged some gravestones from a landscaping project in South Windsor. She found the caretakers of the town’s old cemeteries to make sure they weren’t misplaced and discovered their stories. “Ursula was 13 years old and the stone carver made a mistake,” Penny relayed. “Moses Loomis’s stone is farther up the wall to the left of the oakleaf hydrangea, but I don’t call that area Moses’s garden. I don’t think he’d like it. His last name was spelled wrong on the stone. He became a captain and so his stone was removed and replaced with a military stone. His wife, who is leaning by my shed, had her name spelled wrong too. Lots of mistakes going on back then.” Penny also has one unmarked that she found when digging in her own yard. “It’s now the headstone for my kitty Mario.”
As autumn approaches, the hydrangea at the entrance turns into papery mauve blossoms, and the annuals in urns, skirting the foundation, and brimming in the window boxes come into their own, as do the hostas, wearing their assorted greens and textures, most noticeable now that summer’s surfeit of flowers has faded. Perennial blue ageratum delicately contributes to all compositions, its reputation for rampancy welcome this time of year when it forms a heavenly veil for orange marigolds, and fairy wands of pink anemone, and sedum “autumn joy” with its plates starting green tinged pink and metamorphosing to its winter brick. Dahlias, deliciously colored tropical sherbet, sunrise, crimson, rise above the gardens, cherry tomatoes climb a seven foot tall ladder at the kitchen door and a sparkling white sweet autumn clematis smothers a trellis. Wild violet and white asters sprinkle the shade and in the sun, the bittersweet petals of gallardia surround maroon centers threaded with gold and partner with the last of the season’s black-eyed Susans. Golden rod, jewel and Joe Pye weed circle the pond and tower over the stonewall striped with cleome and punctuated with zebra grass, tasseled now in the fall.
This time of year, the children would have returned to the little schoolhouse after the harvest, while the season unfurled its autumnal wildflowers and ignited its foliage; and whenever I drive by the ABC House, along with letting my imagination wander to those long ago school days, I look forward to seeing what’s growing in Penny’s garden.