Luscious Landscapes - Bay Harbor
Continued from:
Luscious Landscapes - Lake Charlevoix
See also:
Luscious Landscapes - The Blossoms
At the Bay Harbor estate:
Dinner-plate-sized dahlias, fragrant lily of the valley, delicate astilbe, climbing hydrangea, scarlet red crocosmia, deliberate moss coverings and custom bronze sculptures are highlights of the landscaping at the second home featured here, located among rambling acreage along Lake Michigan at Bay Harbor.
Parker and Drost were also the team behind the landscaping at this site, which required busting through limestone and carving out a place for both home and the lush, verdant landscaping. Because the homeowners have owned the home for 14 years, the gardens are abundant and ambrosial — and continually maintained by gardener Terry Clayton, of Private Gardens Landscaping, located out of Pellston.
The landscaping complements the arts-and-crafts style home, hued in a natural-tone exterior, that blends into the thickly wooded and secluded lots. Sculptures by local artist Paul Varga (see article, this issue) accent the scenery, including a 9-foot-tall archway framing a snapshot view of the lake.
A man-made stream wraps the home from front entryway, around the side and through the back yard, where it pauses to a near-standstill before trickling down over the bluff toward Lake Michigan.
“We tried to make the landscaping as indigenous and as natural as possible,” said Parker.
Field notes about going native
From Marika Drier, horticulturist with Drost Landscape ...
Part of the beauty of designing landscaping in Northern Michigan is incorporating native species into formal or casual layouts. “I have a really cool job where I get to dream up landscape designs, grow the plants and help maintain the properties to keep them looking beautiful after finishing planting projects,” said Drier.
Some of Drier’s recommendations in the native species realm that are more readily available: pickerel; columbine; bushy and smooth aster; flowering and pagoda dogwood; ferns including lady, male, fancy, cinnamon and royal; switch grass; Helen’s flower; great blue lobelia; obedient plant; brown-eyed susan; serviceberry; staghorn sumac; spiderwort; hawthorn and white cedar.
Drier recommends those looking for native Michigan plants start by checking out www.wildtypeplants.com, a Lansing-area nursery. Wildtype grows its plant stock from legally wild harvested Michigan seed sources, which helps to keep the plants true to the same genetics that are here in Michigan, she noted.
