The Woodland Garden

Garden Rooms at Havenwood Gardens, June 2024

The Moss Walk in the Woodland Garden at Havenwood

Welcome to the Woodland Garden!

This is a large, nearly half acre of shade garden that is broken into four parallel walks that radiate out from the house. Under dozens of mature trees, some of them likely 300 years old, we have created hedging, understory and ground layers in the shade that begin colorfully in early spring, make a green carpet in summer and finish autumn with a colorful burst of foliage. These planting areas are in part to full shade, and run from wet and boggy to dry as a bone. Come take a walk around with photos from the past couple of weeks, and hear a bit about the making of the Woodland Garden. 🌿 

Before: photos from 2013 of the Woodland area

Before photos of the Woodland Garden at Havenwood: We had many lovely white oak and red oak trees, a beech, a hop hornbeam, a mountain laurel, and some bluets hiding in the moss and Trillium in the rocks. There was no hedging around the property, middle layer or understory, or ground layer.

The very first step for making the Woodland Garden was the leave the leaves. You can see in the above photo that we got right to work in the first autumn of 2013, allowing the leaves to lie around the trees to prepare the ground for planting in the coming decade. All of the wonderful leaf mould has made a rich, soft soil for shade-loving plants of all sorts…

After: June 2024

Entering the first walk in the Woodland Garden this June…

First: the Chip Path

There are several ways to enter the Woodland Garden, as it fills the area near the house, along the driveway, and extends to the far southwest corner of the property. The above arch is one entry that takes you down the first path, which we call the “Chip path” (as it is made from broken concrete sidewalks and topped with fresh wood chips), which is itself made up of a few different areas: the Primrose Walk, the Bluet garden, the Japanese garden, Hellebore Hill, and ends at a children’s corner garden.

Foxgloves, various Primula, Hosta 'Drinking Gourd' and Calycanthus 'Hartledge Wine' which make up the first part of this Chip path.