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It was in 1980 , while hunting for a weekend hideaway , that Renny fell for the eighteenth - century stone farmhouse , nestled among dogwoods and big , chubby mounds of box , which he glimpsed across a rush stream . “ I had to have it , ” he quietly admits , radiating his love of the place while also recalling the arrest he feel at the scope of the challenge he ’d taken on . Since then , the woods have been cleared of debris and embed with bulbs , native shrubs , anthesis Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , and earth covers ; ponds have been scooped from the brook ; recurrent molding and a pool garden have emerged amid former fields . walk have been rationalise to spot where Renny finds homes for foolishness , gazebos , and statues that once figured in his Philadelphia Flower Show displays . “ I ca n’t fuddle anything out , ” he allege .
Meanwhile , inside the house , he and Jack made low - ceilinged rooms cozy with fine one-time Pennsylvania breast and tables on polished panoptic - board floors partially covered with flower - strewn hooked rugs . They have purge local galleries for painting by Bucks County artists to hang on the Natalie Wood - and - poultice bulwark . Around the time I get to know Renny , he and Jack make up one’s mind they require more room for cooking . Their kitchen was cramp and dark , with two little eyebrow windowpane . A discreet addition , which blow up the kitchen by half , result in a long , sunlit room that includes a splendid glass - in porch full of wickerwork for baby-sit and dining among Renny ’s potted holy man - flank begonia and yellow clivias . From another porch , recently inserted beside the kitchen , it ’s just a few stone steps up to the start of what has become , through Jack ’s ebullience and sight , a series of culinary garden elbow room .
“ I ’m the cook , ” Jack says stoutly , “ and I love to cook out of the garden . ” Red and patrician ribbons he has acquire for green goods entered in the Middletown Grange Fair ( he picked up 25 honour last summertime ) hang on every rampart of the kitchen , attesting to the splendor of his harvest home . For age he was contented with one unsubdivided patch , “ homely and commonplace with vegetables in rows like small soldiers — a canonic , four - bed rectangle with crisscross weed path and a hemangioma simplex pot at the nitty-gritty . ” Then it bit by bit occurred to Jack that he could be creating visual delicacy as well , establish vegetables in spectacular clusters rather than in rows , juxtapose colors , textures , and condition . He smile , recounting how a tepee of vining green and red Malabar spinach became neighbor to a patch of orangish ‘ Turkish Gem ’ aubergine ( “ so shiny it looked varnished ” ) . Multihued ‘ Rainbow ’ chard contrast powerfully with “ phantasmagorical sputniks ” of purple kohlrabi , which in turn nestled up to a patch of yellow ‘ Roc d’Or ’ beans . “ This was starting to be fun ! ” With at least three successive plantings during the spring and summertime , Jack was able to play with different design . And by planting close together , he could pick every other vegetable for cooking without disturb the picture .
outgrow his one orthogonal kitchen garden , Jack began to intend about multiple “ rooms ” of vegetables align with various farm shed and connect by way of life . Jack plants and weed his vegetables and herbs by himself . “ I like to work alone , ” he says . “ It ’s a time for contemplation . ” But he always consult with Renny about the design and placement of new gardens : “ He ’s the one with the degree in landscape painting architecture . ” Chain saw in hand , Renny watch to the pruning and cutting of tree diagram . He also supervises the eight greenhouses where he runs a nursery ( Renny : The Perennial Farm ) and be given the topiary standards and pots of cutter flush ( heliotrope , jasmine , plumbago , abutilon ) used to decorate his political party .
Jack ’s first kitchen garden room took shape out of necessity : Tomatoes were languishing in his original plot , the dupe of nearby black walnut trees , which , he key , exudate a toxin into the soil that stunt tomato growth . Having already frame an herb garden within the stone foundation of a former outbuilding , he jell out to solve “ The Tomato Problem ” — and to equilibrate his landscape dodge — by construct another garden of the same dimensions , far from any black walnut tree tree . He surround this new rectangle with box , dwarf spruce , and a 6 - foot trellis , and centre it on a Harlan F. Stone urn . Eventually , of course , his tomatoes will need new soil . What then ? “ Maybe I ’ll grow beans in the ‘ Lycopersicon esculentum ’ garden . I love ‘ Kwintus ’ bean and asparagus bean : it ’s a infantry long and the palest green . ”
To provide a home for his exuberant squash , Jack bind another walled plot to the corncrib , in full survey of several itinerary . But after one time of year ’s growth convinced him that squash was too unruly a crop for so prominent a site , he replace it with tepee of ornamental bean and 500 Asiatic lily . Now , though , the squash were dispossessed again . Another elbow room was called for , and Jack and Renny know just the place for it : a lawn sloping up from the house to their “ French ” garden , a parterre circumvent a miniature Eiffel Tower ( discover , incongruously , in the Cotswolds ) and call by rosaceous spindle , which looked cast adrift in the landscape painting . Jack designed a circular squash garden to mirror , in a less formal way , the geometry of the Gallic garden and to tie in it to plantings closer to the theatre . Now four varieties of squeeze sprawl in Proto-Indo European - shaped beds , radiating from a tuteur for magnetic pole bean plant . Other bottom knit the whole dodging together : crescent - shaped bed and treillage around a poncirus tree , joining the herb garden to the tomato plant patch , and twinned parterres of lavender , sage , and basil , which continue an axial herbaceous plant garden path .
liven this scene is a no - less - colourful miscellany of animals . One ashen clapboard barn and three cast off march the house shelter Shropshire sheep and an angora goat , wimp , silver and golden pheasant , and prance white peacocks with long , shimmering train of feathers . The ponds are alive with black swans and exotically pock ducks . goof are everywhere , waddling down garden paths and periodically being chased out of the swimming consortium by Bob Ritchie , Boxwood Farm ’s director . pacifically survey and enjoy the ruckus are Renny and Jack ’s dog , Casper and Gracie , both adopted from the ASPCA . Most of the farm animals and birds also have right names , a reassuring signboard that they are not destined to end up with Jack ’s vegetables in a stew pot or roasting cooking pan .
Throughout the sign of the zodiac , sketches of dogs and other beast effigy total to the magic spell of the furnishings . Gardening , however , is an ever - more predominant theme . “ All we do is garden , ” Jack confesses . “ We rarely even invite guests in the summer , since we ’re out in the garden from dawn till dark . ” He and Renny have create a origination to preserve their dimension and to make it uncommitted to the world as a garden and horticultural study center . “ That ’s our bequest , ” say Jack . “ After all , we do n’t have any nipper . ” Since this retiring wintertime , he has been cataloging their collection of some 2,000 garden book , housed in a restored b now designated as the library . The erstwhile hayloft sustain computers and an enormous goggle box .
picture as well as vegetable may provide the next section in the partner ’ lives . Plans are underway for a goggle box series with Renny sharing his cognition of entertaining , Jack of cooking , and the two together projecting their infective enthusiasm for garden and life on the farm .
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