Garden Tour of Moss Mountain Farm Part 3

This is part three of a four part post of my visit to P Allen Smith’s Moss Mountain Farm. Today we will visit the west lawn of Moss Mountain Farm, see the guest house, and visit the chicken house known as Poultryville.

A gravel pathway leads around the west side of the house. Again I love the boxwoods on either side of the path and the white gate set within the hedge.

This huge hydrangea in full western sun is the Incrediball Hydrangea. It was quite the bloomer!

 

I will repeat myself in saying that a mass planting of a single color makes a big impact. Just look at the impact of those Coleus in the photo above.

The large west lawn is enclosed by a wall of hedges too. Another hedge border of roses is inside the taller wall of hedges. The roses appear to be Knock Out roses. You can see two more of the huge oak trees in the background.

The focal point of the lawn is a deer statue (about 5 feet tall) set into another bed of roses which was underplanted with petunias.

The guest house is between the Garden Home and the chicken house. We did not go inside but passed it on our way to the chicken house.

The guest house was built for Allen’s brother, sister in law, and their two children who live and work on the farm. The guest house was a challenge to build a 1500 square feet home in 150 days for $150,000.  We were told by the tour guide that all three goals were exceeded. The house is a 1600 square feet and the entire project was chronicled on youtube. You can see it by clicking here. This is a great introductory article about it. I also remember seeing an article about this project in Southern Living magazine.

You can see from the picture above that the chicken house is huge! The chicken house is called Poultryville.

The photo above is the view from the other side of the chicken house.

This is the view back to the house.

Allen started raising chickens as a kid in the 4 H program and is very involved with preserving heritage breed chickens.

I would venture to say that these are some of the luckiest and best kept chickens in the world!

I have one more post on the garden tour.  I may be saving the best for last!  If you missed the other posts you can see Post One here and Post Two here. You can see my home tour of the Garden Home here.

I’m linking to Metamorphosis Monday, to Grace at Home, and to Thoughts of Home on Thursday. Be sure to click the links for lots of inspiration.

Garden Tour of Moss Mountain Farm Part 2

In this part of our garden tour of Moss Mountain Farm we will see the areas to the east side of the house including the east lawn, the white garden, the rose garden and the vegetable garden.

The white garden was very elegant. There was a small garden pool in the center surrounded by gravel. The pool area was encircled by all white plantings, I believe they were white SunPatiens. I found this short article about SunPatiens in P Allen Smith’s e-magazine Naturally. Beautiful hedges formed the walls of this garden area and there were two large white stone eagles on pedestals placed within the wall of hedges. It was a very simple but beautiful design.

The white garden is just beyond the east lawn and the greenhouse.

The  east lawn is also edged by a wonderful wall of hedges and has a nice alley of trees. The focal point is a statue placed on a pedestal at the end of the alley. In the upper left of the photo above you can also see another one of the huge “sister” oak trees.

There is another one of the huge oak trees on the right side of the photo above too.

This beautiful gateway leads out beyond the east lawn to the other areas of the garden.

 The greenhouse sits behind the hedgewall of the east lawn. It is completely surrounded by hedges. Beyond the greenhouse area is the white garden, then the pond and vegetable and rose gardens.

The photo above taken from a third floor window of the house shows the east garden “wall” and the greenhouse and white garden beyond the hedges.

The photo above shows the view beyond the white garden looking back toward the house. The service road leads to the rose garden.

This pond is just beyond the white garden. What could be more romantic than a rowboat and swans?

This volunteer pumpkin was growing along the service road.

There are two entrances to the rose garden, an upper entrance and a lower entrance.

Because it was terribly hot when we were there and because the roses were past their prime, we didn’t walk down into the rose garden but only took photos from the upper entrance.

Weddings are sometimes held in the rose garden.

The process of designing and building the iron gates for the rose garden was featured on one episode of the Garden Home television shows.

The photo above shows the walkway from the vegetable garden down to the rose garden. It is quite a steep incline. If you look closely you can see the river beyond the rose garden.

The one acre vegetable garden is fenced in to help with critter control.

A central path goes right through the center of the garden with another gate at the other end. If you keep walking out the gate you will go down the hill to the rose garden.

Espaliered fruit trees help keep this area very neat and tidy looking.

The sturdy wooden fence also provides support for grape vines.

The vegetable garden is divided into very manageable sized beds separated by mulched pathways.

A nice variety of flowers and herbs were also planted in the vegetable garden.

I did notice drip irrigation hoses in the vegetable garden.

This last photo was taken at the entry of the vegetable garden looking back toward the house. The barn looking building is the event center. If you missed part one of the garden tour click here ( the front of the house and the border gardens around the driveway) and if you missed the tour of the inside of the Garden Home you can see it by clicking here.

I have two more posts to get in all the pictures of the garden and I hope you will come back to see them too!

I’m linking to Metamorphosis Monday, to Wow Us Wednesday to Thoughts of Home on Thursday, and to Grace at Home. Be sure to click the links for lots of inspiration.

A Tour of Moss Mountain Farm–Part One

This post contains an affiliate link for Amazon. If you purchase from Amazon through this link I will make a small commission at no extra charge to you.

I recently had the opportunity to visit and tour P Allen Smith’s Moss Mountain Farm and I have many, many pictures to share. In fact, I have so many pictures that I am dividing them into 4 posts. I hope you will come back for the other posts, or better yet, follow the blog by entering your email here and you will be notified by email each time a new post is published. If you missed my last post with the tour of the Garden Home you can see it by clicking here.

P Allen Smith purchased 600 acres along the Arkansas River in 2006 and proceeded to build the Garden Home and develop 50 acres of the property. Of course the garden will always bea work in progress and what a wonderful work it is. There are seven huge oak trees on the property and the one in front of the house is now called Big Sister! The big trees have lightning rods to protect them from storms and lightning.

The photo above came from the Moss Mountain Farm website but I wanted you to see an aerial view to get the lay of the land. Allen Smith has a firm that does landscape design and has written several gardening books. He has used foundational garden design principles to divide the acreage into several spaces or garden rooms. Other than the paved driveway at the front of the house, there is very little hardscape. By hardscape I am referring to concrete, block or stone walls or pathways. All the other pathways are gravel and most of the garden walls are live plant material. You can also see in the photo above how well balanced and symmetrical everything is.

Before we chose a date to take the tour, we called to see if Allen would be there on that day. Sometimes he is at the tour and sometimes he is not. We chose a date when we were told he would be there.

He is as personable in person as he is on television. It was just liking talking to an old friend. He greeted the crowd, then had a period for questions and answers then took time to pose for photos with anyone who wanted one.

As I stated in the last post, the Garden Home was built in the Greek Revival style to reflect the original home that was built there in 1840.

There is an event center building next to the house where receptions and other events are held.

It looks somewhat like a barn on the outside.

It also has a large patio area with beautiful planters that can also be used for parties and events.

Our tour included lunch in the event center.

Our lunch was a grilled chicken salad which is a recipe in his new cookbook. The desert also came from the new cookbook.

You can purchase the cookbook by clicking here.

The building above has a small gift shop, restrooms, and a small chicken area.

There is extensive use of boxwoods throughout the garden.

Boxwoods were used as foundation plantings and as path markers.

In the photo above, you can see another one of the giant oak trees in the background.

The hardscape of the driveway is softened by a beautiful border garden.

If you look closely, you can see that the driveway garden is enclosed with boxwoods.

You get a pretty good view of the boxwoods in the photo above.

I don’t remember if this garden was irrigated or not but I do remember that all of the plants used here are very tolerant of heat and sun.

Notice that he used a very limited color pallet for this garden.

I was taking notes on my phone and unfortunately I was not able to keep up so I didn’t get all of the plants names but I do remember that this garden includes purple fountain grass, petunias, coleus, sweet potato vine, sunpatients, and angelonia.

The same plants were used in the urn.

I’ve said for years, if you want to make a big impact, have a mass planting of a single color. Because this is a pretty large area, using a lot of single plants would not be very effective. All of these small plants were planted in groups of three. That way, each color does show up and it makes a pretty nice impact!

I hope that you enjoyed this part of the tour and will come back for the others!

I usually only post one time per week but I will speed these up so as not to drag it out so much!

I’m linking to Wow Us Wednesday. Be sure to click the link for lots of inspiration.