Garden Tour of Moss Mountain Farm Part 4

This is the last post of my garden tour of Moss Mountain farm.

My pictures don’t come close to doing the garden justice.

To help visualize the layout of this large area, I have added some labels to the aerial view photo that I found online.

The view above is coming around to the back of the house as you pass by the kitchen.

This is the entrance to the basement in the photo above.

The art studio is on the east side of the croquet lawn directly behind the house.

The summer kitchen is on the west side of the croquet lawn. We were told that there is a 2000 gallon cistern beneath the croquet lawn that holds water used for irrigation.

This outdoor kitchen is outside the summer kitchen.

There is also an outdoor fireplace outisde the art studio.

More hedges were used as garden walls dividing the garden into smaller spaces.

Someone on the tour asked about the appearance that the hedges are trimmed on a bevel getting wider at the bottom and narrower at the top. We were told that this method of trimming keeps the bottom of the hedges from being shaded and getting “leggy” looking. These hedges certainly have a uniform full look all the way to the ground.

There were more espaliered pear trees in the parterre gardens.

This was a cute little porthole in one of the hedge walls.

You can peep through to see the view down to the river.

The photo above looks down through the blue and white garden to the river.

The blue and white garden is on the lower parterre and has a small fish pond with containers filled with a variety of white plants. The four corners of this garden are Vitex trees.

We were told that the Vitex trees like hot dry weather. They seemed to be thriving very well in this spot.

The photo above is a close up of the Vitex tree. It has purple/blue spike blooms.

The last photo is the view back up to the house from the blue and white garden.

I do hope that you have enjoyed the tours. If you missed any of the posts you can see Garden Tour Part One here, Garden Tour Part Two here, and Garden Tour Part Three here.  You can see the tour of the Garden Home here.  If you ever have the opportunity to visit Moss Mountain Farm near Little Rock, Arkansas, I would highly recommend it. We enjoyed every minute of our visit there!

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

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.