Every garden has its season. While we strive to ensure a continuous stream of efflorescence from April to October, there is always a crescendo, a certain time of year when the lawn is overwhelmed with bloom. In New England, June, with its roses and iris and rhododendrons, its peonies, its cranesbills and coral bells, is usually that month. Nowhere is this as evident as in the garden of

Ann Hamlin, where the late spring and early summer profusion of petals creates a floral confection of soft pastels.

Ann’s garden stretches across the front of her lawn in a splendid sweep of color.  At the southern rim, silver artemesia encircles an enormous clump of bleeding heart, its appropriately named blossoms dripping in deep pink wands to partner with the pale pink saucers of a neighboring peony. An expanse of Siberian irises, with falls and petals of an unusual shade of lavender, separate the peony from a weigela and its rose tubular bells.  A sea of catmint skirts two enormous amsonias, forming substantial mounds to anchor the lamp post that lights a foot path where dianthus has crept across with a sprinkling of rose florets, the lilac racemes of the catmint and amsonia’s periwinkle stars creating effervescent clouds.

Earlier this spring an assortment of golden daffodils sprouted here, and later this summer delicate blue bells will climb Jacob’s ladder, phlox will form pink crests, coreopsis will stitch pale yellow trails, mallow will unfurl its mauve saucers, and lilies, their colorful trumpets, and the strong foliage of this flowery season will remain, in mossy carpets and cushions and cascading wands and blades, the lanced foliage of the amsonia turning a buttery yellow when the autumn chrysanthemums bloom.

Flowers follow along a split rail fence which parallels the front of the house.  On one side, the spires of indigo lupine and those of an uncommon magenta mingle with the darkest variety of Siberian iris, ‘Caesar’s Brother’. These dense shades are lightened with a fountain of soft yellow potentilla and a scattering of columbine, their rare, wine colored flowers floating like winged fairies amidst the pale and dark pink bowls of peony blossoms. In front of the fence, a magenta geranium swirls around the stalks of velvety lamb’s ear and the spires of a deep violet salvia and the intense indigo of a veronica, where a welcomed spurt of orange poppies surprises visitors. Rhododendrons provide structure and additional color, their spherical pink and rose blossoms complementing the purples and pinks, and another with pure white flowers skirted with pulmonaria, its dappled leaves echoing the globular blooms now, and later the glowing white flowers waving over the velvety silver of a lychnis. The garden is anchored with evergreen holly punctuating the border with its sharp, lustrous leaves.

A grass path separates the garden and the house, where the foundation is cushioned with evergreens: holly supplies winter interest, boxwood provides structure, and japonica’s clusters of ivory bells bring one of the season’s earliest nectar. The front door is flanked with a light purple azalea and the daphne,’Carol Mackie’, a rounded shrub of sage green leaves with golden margins and pale pink flowers filling the space beneath a picture window and undoubtedly filling the air indoors and out with its unsurpassed fragrance. Lacy ferns and silver frosted lamium skirt the shrubbery.

Viewed from a far, we observe the brushstrokes of an impressionist, sprinkles and spatters and stripes, droplets and pools, dappled petals and light, waves and veils: the gardens of a colorist. Close inspection reveals the saucers and the plates, the spears and the stalks, the bells and the globes – the forms and the textures that illustrate why it all works so well.

Not visible from the street is the garden which circles to the entrance of the house. Here clumps of ‘None-so-Pretty’ wave their tiny, magenta petals, and the pale pink bells of penstemon rise from  beet-colored foliage, and the purple blossoms of liatrus climb stalks which have self-sown in the crevices of paving stones. The ballerina blossoms of Siberian iris flower in spring with pink spires of lupine, and in summer, the golden trumpets of ‘Stella de Oro’ lilies and scarlet sparks of bee balm. The garden is rimmed with sweeps of pink creeping phlox and ruffles of a huechera with deep purple leaves brushed with a pewter sheen which partner perfectly with the silvery felt of lamb’s ear.

Also not visible from the street are the gardens at the rear of the property, where vast pools of pulmonaria and scented geranium circle trees that provide shade for the cascading bleeding hearts that contrast with the soaring white petals and purple falls of bearded irises, and the peonies and rhododendrons in shades of pink and rose and red supplying structural layers. Later, an assortment of lilies and coreopsis will carry the garden through summer.  An enormous picture window in the kitchen provides a view of these gardens and beyond: horses in a pasture rimmed with rows of soft white pines and maples.

As we tour the gardens, we discuss where certain plants have come from, how they’ve faired in one area versus another, their names, those which struggle and the ways to strengthen them, those that have happily spread, those lost, the swapping of seeds. When I first asked for an interview, Ann readily obliged, with the condition that she wasn’t required to “utter anything profound.”  She doesn’t have to; the garden speaks for itself.

Dayna McDermott