The Challenge:

Bryn Fleur is a 1920’s 6 acre estate on the Philadelphia Main Line. The house and grounds were designed by renown architect Horace Trumbauer well known for designing manors of this magnitude. The property had been neglected for well over a decade.

The Vision:

To renovate and restore the gardens as well as the surrounding foliage to it’s original grandeur in a sustainable and maintainable manner. This means preservation of the existing trees for future years to come as well as creating new features to complement the surround elements.

The Solution:

The project started in early spring with a tremendous amount of tree work. There was a stand of 100 foot tall White Pines killed off by white pine weevil. An arborist and entomologist were brought in to identify and organically get rid of the pest as there are still over 30 of these trees on the property.

The second project was re-designing the entrance garden with included a new vegetable/cutting garden and a new Azalea garden. After the tree work was complete, Organixx did an extensive re-planting of the buffer areas – replacing trees that had died or had been destroyed by storm damage. We used tree species that matched what was existing.

Kitchen Garden:

The kitchen garden design was fashioned after a traditional formal potager garden, resulting in an aesthetically pleasing yet highly functional garden space for the growing of vegetables, herbs and cut flowers. The crushed stone walks are formally laid out in a cross pattern with intersecting circular paths allowing for easy accessibility to the raised garden beds. In keeping with traditional potager garden design, the entire garden is framed by a boxwood hedge, with openings to allowing for garden access. The center of the garden features flowering vines on trellises as a focal point, which is part of a strong visual axis from the kitchen door of the house straight through to an arbor with climbing roses, which defines the eastern end of the garden. Sweeping beds of Iris planted along the sloping edge outside the eastern half of the potager garden create a lovely transition between the formal potage garden and the informal lawn area.

Entrance Planting:

The front entrance depicts a formal garden design with many beds lined by boxwood hedges. When entering through the gates at the entrance drive, a strong visual axis is evident which extends through existing stone pillars, down a flight of stone steps and directly to the grand front entrance of the residence. This strong axis was the impetus for creating a formal perennial garden within the circular drive. A crushed stone path with Belgian block edge creates a formal walkway. The walk is lined with Nepeta, providing a continuum of a color and texture, with the remainder of the perennial border consisting of plants specifically chosen to ensure a long season of interest and bloom. An area was designed for a sculpture as a vertical focal point within the walk, further emphasizing the existing strong visual axis. Many existing plants were left in place, with many being shaped into formal conical form, and others were relocated around the walls of the formal entrance, maintaining the symmetry and formality seemingly demanded of the entrance space. Masses of red roses with within the entrance walls provide a long season of color.