Valley Gardens: Into the woods

By Cheryl Wilson

Published on July 04, 2008

Beyond two lichen-encrusted boulders covered with clematis vines, a long curving driveway wends its way through woodlands to a white clapboard house surrounded by lush green lawn.

This park-like setting, the home of Mike and Karen Derouin, is featured on the July 12 Westhampton Country Garden Tour to benefit the Westhampton Council on Aging.

The front veranda is ornamented by window boxes with large single-flowered yellow marigolds and purple callibrachoas or million bell plants. Pots of New Guinea impatiens in pink, lavender and magenta mark the entrance. Around a lamp post, a sunny bed of daylilies, Siberian iris, geraniums, black-eyed Susans and bold magenta Lychnis coronaria or rose campion welcomes visitors.

Near the house a white arbor draped with honeysuckle beckons the visitor to explore a cultivated woodland of about three-quarters of an acre, which Mike Derouin says is the main focal point of their garden. Gravel paths are flanked by beds of ferns, hostas, astilbe and wild flowers. A sturdy bridge stretches across a dry stream bed towards an area of dense shade that the Derouins call Sherwood Forest.

Derouin built all the trellises, a pavilion he calls a pergola, a decorative split rail fence and the bridge. A machinist by trade, he said, modestly, "I'm a handyman." He noted that he carefully aligns garden structures with sight lines from the house. "It's the engineer or machinist in me," he said.

Along the edge of the woodland, where more sun penetrates, they planted coneflowers in white and pink as well as purple-leafed sand cherries. Over the past decade, they purchased hundreds of shrubs and perennials, taking advantage of end-of-year sales.

"The label might have fallen off a plant and they are selling it for $2," he said. Their favorite sources are Five Star Nursery in Palmer, near his mother-in-law's house, and Hadley Garden Center. "We get better advice at these smaller places," he explained.

"We moved here in December 1999," Derouin said, adding that they put the lawn in the next year and planted flower beds in 2001, discovering that the soil is very poor. "They call it glacial till," he said. "It's like garbage."

He and his wife and father spent three years clearing the area to build the house and yard. "It was a labor of love," he said. They spent summers hacking out undergrowth and cutting down trees and winters burning the brush. Facing the front of the house is a gorgeous stand of mountain laurel, just gone by, and white birch trees are striking sentinels scattered among the oaks and evergreens in the remaining woods.

Gradually they are cutting down more trees, especially pines and hemlocks, in the cultivated woodland garden. "It's an ongoing process," he said. "We like the dapple of the sun."

Statuary and structures

Strategically placed throughout the gardens are small statues. "My wife has them all over the place," he said. There are so many accent pieces, along with rustic benches, that they have a special shed for their winter storage. It's called "Katie's Clutter Cabin," he said. His wife, Karen, is known as Katie in her family.

Look for the skunk family near the driveway, Bambi and his mother under a shrub in the woodland garden and a bear holding a freshly-caught fish. A trio of green-metal musical frogs cavorts in the dry stream bed Derouin created. The stones were found on the property. "They grow here," he quipped. "Every time you dig, you get stones."

Benches and rustic fences add structural interest to the woodland along with the statues. Deep in Sherwood Forest, where the hemlocks preclude much ground vegetation, a pair of nearly white cement rabbits on a bed of wood chips brightens the shade. Derouin said he purchased about 30 yards of chips from Ravenwold Farm in Northampton to use as mulch. He also buys two to four yards of compost from Westhampton dairy farms. "Every time I plant I add 50 percent compost," he said. In the spring he dresses all of his plants with compost.

A pergola or pavilion with an attractive picnic table is a destination point in Sherwood Forest. Refreshments will be served here during the tour. Red astilbes, hostas, red-leafed heuchera and Japanese painted ferns with reddish tints surround the dining area.

Derouin loves ferns and is pleased that many native ferns spring up of their own accord. He said that once he started disturbing the soil in the natural woodland, "I've started to get trilliums and even lady's slippers popping up," their seeds long dormant.

Visitors exit the cultivated woodland through a red cedar arbor, which was Derouin's spring project this year. It is flanked by rose of Sharon shrubs and a small garden of sun-loving wild flowers including black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and white daisies.

The lawn is emerald green near the house thanks to an in-ground irrigation system and a three-step fertilizer and pest control program, Derouin said. He said it can be manually operated to avoid wasting water, adding that he has a rain gauge for accuracy.

Across the lawn on a carefully planned axis from the kitchen window is Dolly's Garden, a small perennial bed under ashes and a beech tree, planted in memory of his mother. "Bloom where you are planted," reads the banner. Here yellow anthemis, Stella D'Oro' daylilies and purple coneflowers are in bloom. Two aster plants from last year have multiplied into a thick stand for fall bloom.

Other island beds under trees feature hostas and ferns. One special tree is a black birch (Betula lenta), which Derouin admits does shade the in-ground pool a bit but is too unusual to cut down.

Derouin said he was a novice gardener when he started. "My mom's mother was a gardener but my mother didn't have a green thumb," he said. But his sisters are great gardeners. "Now it's like sibling rivalry," he said. He has learned a lot from his mistakes, mostly that you have to amend your soil.

Surrounding the lawn and gardens is wild woodland kept at bay by stone borders, not really tall enough to be called walls. "We have 300 feet of wood line," Derouin explained. Some of his garden beds are edged with stone but most simply have unobtrusive 6-inch-deep plastic edging sunk into the ground. He purchases the top-grade edging from Tarnow's in Chicopee.

Many gardeners who live in wooded areas bemoan the lack of sun, but the Derouins have learned to maximize the charm of shade. They depend on reliable shade-loving plants like hosta and astilbe and native shrubs to create a quiet haven that is soothing yet still exciting with its twisting pathways, unexpected wooden structures and unusual statuary. Anyone frustrated with deep shade should be sure to visit this garden on the tour.

The Country Garden Tour in Westhampton presents six gardens, some with roses, well-designed containers, poolside plantings and old-fashioned cottage garden flowers in full sun. Tickets are $8 in advance at Westhampton Memorial Library, Intervale Farm, Outlook Farm, Tobin Family Farm, Straw Bale Cafe, all in Westhampton, and at Back Yard Birds in Northampton. Tickets are $10 on the day of the tour and available at the same venues except the library. Admission for children is free.