Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia

Last month, my friend Sharon, the Goth Gardener, sent me a link to an article about a program at Woodlands, a garden cemetery in West Philadelphia.  (more about this in a minute)  Later that week, I came across another mention of Woodlands as I was reading a fascinating article in the Southern Garden History Society Newsletter.  That article referenced another article about Woodlands ... this definitely appeared to be a very significant place, and in all of my research about garden cemeteries I had NEVER before come across any mention of Woodlands.

Entrance to Woodlands Cemetery

William Hamilton (1745-1813) inherited 300 acres of land near on the Schuylkill River west of Philadelphia.  The Woodlands was recognized throughout post-revolutionary America as a leading example of English taste in architecture and landscape gardening. (source)  Hamilton created a landscape full of rare plants and trees, gathered from plant explorers and through his network of significant botanical associates (Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Bartram, etc.)  "There was not a rare plant in Europe, Asia, Africa, from China and the islands in the South Sea, of which has had any account, which he had not procured."  His 1813 obituary noted, "The study of botany was the principal amusement of his life."  (source)

"In 1840, local investors bought the intact core of the estate to transform the grounds into a rural cemetery.  Still active today, Woodlands Cemetery retains two of Hamilton's 18th-century buildings, elaborate Victorian funerary monuments, curving green contours and majestic trees."  (source)

Last Monday, I had the opportunity to visit Woodlands for a couple of hours, while I was near Philadelphia on my way to the National Clean Plant Network-Roses annual meeting at Longwood Gardens.  (More about what I learned at this meeting in a future post.)  I went there specifically to see the results of the Grave Gardener project, where gardeners adopt, plant, and tend cradle graves in the cemetery.  (A cradle grave has a large headstone and footstone, connected by curbing to create a space that is perfect for use as a planting enclosure.  For more about cradle graves, click HERE.)

The Grave Gardener program at Woodlands is in its second year, and it has proved to be very popular.  (150 gardeners were chosen for 2017, from a pool of 250 applications.)  There is a list of approved plants that can be used, most of which have historical significance.  Grave Gardeners are encouraged to research the people in the graves that they tend, which can create a true relationship between the gardener and the "residents". 

"There's two groups of people," says the executive director of the cemetery.  "There are the ones that think this is the coolest thing ever, like when you tell them you do this, and there's the ones that think it's the weirdest thing ever."  (source)   (All of you already know which group I belong to.)

The monuments and the landscape at Woodlands are spectacular.  Located in West Philadelphia, surrounded on all sides by modern buildings, Woodlands' 54 acres is an quiet place of beauty and calm.  The cemetery founders were keenly aware that their enterprise saved this unique place from industrial and residential development in what was then a streetcar suburb.  (source)

While Woodlands has an amazing collection of trees in its landscape, fifteen of which qualify as state champion trees, it doesn't have much else.  There is grass, a lot of grass ... no shrubs or perennials to speak of ... and only one rose that I could find, located in a landscaped area near the mansion.  No telling exactly how old the rose is, but it appears to be an old once-bloomer.  (and I totally forgot to snap a photo of it.)

Every time I go to a new town and visit their cemetery, I see things that I have never seen before.  At Woodlands, I found unique monuments and at least one cast iron fence that was new to me.

I wanted to stay at Woodlands for a while longer, because there was still so much to see, but it was getting late, we were hot and thirsty, and we had to get on the road to meet friends for dinner.

I will conclude this post with my favorite images from Woodlands.  These three mausoleums were in the farthest corner of the cemetery, built into a hill, on a footpath away from the road, tucked in the shade of enormous trees.  It was an incredibly peaceful spot!

I thought of Goth Gardener when I saw this, and I know that she will agree that it is a perfect place for one's eternal rest.

If you have time to get sucked into a wonderful, enlightening Internet rabbit hole, click on the links in this post to read the articles.  I was amazed at the significance of William Hamilton, and you probably will be, too. 

Sunday Snapshot: His and Hers

I am sitting in our Family Room on this lovely Sunday morning, trying to get used to my new laptop.  (My former one is eight years old, the battery won't charge, I can't buy a new battery for it, and it ran out of disk space.)  

Anyway .... this morning, I was struck by how differently my husband and I keep our individual spaces.  He sits on the left end of the sofa, I'm either on the right end or in the far leather chair, where Ruby is in this photo.  (None of the photos in this post are staged.  They represent real life on display, and fortunately, the place is fairly tidy right now.)

This is how my husband's end table always looks.  It contains only what belongs there, no extraneous junk, no piles.

Mine, on the other hand, looks like a photo from an "I Spy" book ... with a heaping assortment of whatever I'm working on at the time.  

We see three pairs of reading glasses, knitting supplies (a cable needle, a counter, two pairs of scissors, and needle caps, because I'm making a sweater, which Instagram followers have seen, and I'm actively using these things most evenings), hair stuff (a clip, bobby pins, and an elastic hair tie), a pile of bracelets, a mechanical pencil, a pile of magazines and books topped by my iPad, an external hard drive, and a few other random things.  What you don't see is a pile of books on the floor beside the leather chair.

I try really hard to not pile things, but it feels like I'm fighting a losing battle.  From time to time, I go through the stuff and put away the things that I know I'm not using.  The table gets a bit tidier as a result, but it's only temporary.

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Sunday Snapshots are posts devoted to moments in time that represent glimpses into everyday life in Hartwood, or wherever else I happen to be at the time. 

Barn Garden Progress

When we last saw the 15' x 18' expansion of the Barn Garden earlier this week, I had marked it off and laid landscape fabric in the area.  

The next step was to add an edge.  In this case, salvaged 4x4 fence posts from our dwindling stash, cut to size and fastened with ground spikes.  They're not beautiful, but they do their job ... keeping the mulch IN and most of the creeping weeds OUT. 

The final step, in this part of the process, was to add a generous layer of mulch.

The combination of landscape fabric and mulch will block the light to the grass underneath, and most of it should die within the next few weeks.  By the time summer is waning and temperatures begin to cool, the area will be ready to plant.  What am I planting here, you ask?

Some of them are:

"Talcott Noisette" from cuttings at Hollywood Cemetery.

"Tutta's Noisette" from Rose Petals Nursery.

"Ryland Rose" from cuttings at Hollywood Cemetery.

"Lathrop Noisette" from cuttings at Hollywood Cemetery

"Woodbine Rose" from cuttings at a cemetery in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

"Isaacs Rose" from cuttings at Hollywood Cemetery

For now, these babies will continue to live safely in their little pots ... where I can give them a lot of attention, till the weather is favorable for them to live in the ground on their own.

Driving Past Our House, and Going Back in Time

As I was hunting for the satellite image on Google Maps that I used in yesterday's post, I got distracted by the street view of our property.  I can tell exactly when the photos were taken, based on the scene that they show ... late October, 2012.

Our neighbor's property was for sale.  Wonderful new neighbors have been here for three years now.

I don't recognize this car.

That pile of stuff underneath the tarp is the freshly-cut slabs of our fallen oak tree.  THIS post shows how it was done by the sawmill crew.

Their equipment tore the yard up a bit, but not too badly.

This was right before I closed my retail nursery.  The sign was still up.

Next stop, Hartwood Winery next door.  That's their driveway on the right.

I'm such a junkie when it comes to reference and archived material.  I have to handle Google Maps carefully, otherwise I could get lost for days searching addresses and wandering far-off streets.

Have you played on Google Maps and checked out your house?

Expanding the Barn Garden

The Barn Garden (formerly known as the English Garden) was designed and installed in 2010.  Originally, it held only my collection of David Austin English roses.  Over time, some of the Austin roses showed that they are ill suited to life in hot, humid Virginia, and I replaced them with Noisettes. 

One spot adjacent to the garden has always been difficult to maintain.  It's a small area (15' x 18'), with a well head (no power to the well, but there's water in there), an inside corner, and a big pile of rocks.  I need more space for roses, my husband things to be as easy as possible on him when he mows, and we decided that the best way to accomplish both of these objectives would be to clear this spot and make it part of the garden.

This is how it looks from space, courtesy of the folks at Google.

2010, as my husband was helping mulch the newly-planted baby English roses.  Original plant list is HERE.

2014.  Updated plant list at that time is in THIS post.

This garden expansion was easy to accomplish.  I marked the area with string, spray-painted the lines on the ground, and got to work laying ground cloth for the extended path and landscape fabric where the new planting area would be.

Then it was a simple matter of unrolling and stapling more rows of landscape fabric into place.

Laying landscape fabric like this feels like I'm upholstering the yard ... as I unroll it and hammer ground staples to hold it in place, and cut around obstacles like the well head.

After a couple of hours, I was finished.  

Next step is to cut and install 4x4 timbers around the edges of the new bed and to add mulch.  Mulch is very important, because it blocks the sunlight and kills the grass underneath the landscape fabric.  Later this summer, when the worst of the heat is behind us, I can plant the new roses.  Mostly Noisettes, I think ... no surprise.

Pieces Parts for the Porch

While my husband and I were in Richmond yesterday, we made an impulse stop at this wonderful place ...

Governor's Antiques is a HUGE architectural salvage yard.  We went there to see if we could find some inspiration for the renovation of our front porch.

Those of you who have been with me for any time at all may remember that our porch is structurally sound (after being rebuilt in 2005) but completely without any sort of pretty stuff.  Designing the details, with no evidence of what may have been there when our house was built in 1848, has been challenging.  I have planned and plotted, and reworked the design many times, and nothing has seemed to be exactly right.

We went to Governor's specifically to find a corbel or porch bracket that we can use as a pattern.  As luck would have it, the staff there had just finished moving the whole stock of corbels to an inside area, perfectly organized.

All of these are fabulous, but almost every one is WAY too large for our porch.  We weighed our options and came up with two possibilities:

I like the simple curve of this one, and the size is perfect.

This one is also nearly perfect.

We plan to make our own corbels, incorporating elements from our home's original trim, which is long gone.  

The gingerbread trim, on the eaves and above the porch and bay windows, is the original.  The porch columns and railings are not.  There is no evidence of what the original porch may have looked like.

The bat-wing-looking motif is very common in Gothic Revival decoration.  The second bracket from Governor's could easily be modified to have a cut-out that looks something like this one:

photo from Pinterest.

Our visit to Governor's helped us clarify our design for the porch brackets, but it seriously muddied the plan for the porch posts.  I have been working with the idea of square columns, with chamfered corners, boxed on the bottom, with stacked moldings at the top.  One of the posts in this pile, I'm not telling you which one, has the potential to destroy all of that planning ... in a VERY good way.

I saw three of them, and we need four.  I will let you know if the young lady at Governor's succeeds in her search for another one.

We bought the brackets that I showed you.  Either design will be great inspiration for whatever there is to come with the porch.  Seems like this is a never-ending process, with SO many choices.  Our goal is to be finished with it by the end of summer.  Wish us luck.