Owl Creek Farm in West Chester, Pennsylvania

Today we visit Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm (another Philly Fling garden), on a very wet Saturday in September, 2023. The bus dropped us off at the end of a long driveway and we walked up to the house. This shot was taken on that walk...

I took this next photo up near the house. An odd combo of foliage textures.

Looking up other posts online about this garden (to see if they'd provide anymore info I could share with you, which they did not) I came across--this one--from Dallas Garden Buzz. Holy Moly! Did we see the same garden? I love the different photos and memories we all take away from a garden visit. No two people see the same thing, or want to share the same photos.

The fenced veggie garden, and maybe a cutting garden too?

A sleek and modern scarecrow?

I started out to explore the path through the grass next to the veggie garden and heard talk of ticks. That's a hard no. I turned around.

Multi-trunked Magnolia macrophylla.

I'm low-key jealous whenever I see a patch of short tetrapanax, mine are all so tall.

The rainy weather made for really dark photos.

Yes that's an Agave geminiflora in a large pot that's sending up a bloom spike.

A tree fern, with bromeliads, in Pennsylvania, will the surprises never end?

I thought maybe the screened porch might double as a place to store some of the non-hardy plants over the winter? (if they have glass to go in?)

That's a sweet patch of asarum sp.

I loved this bit of drama around the back of the house...

Once you passed under the plant covered trellis you entered a gravel patio area.

So many containers!

Fellow Flinger, Lori Daul.

And look, a gravel garden within the gravel garden...

Tropical in Pennsylvania, who knew?!

To receive alerts of new danger garden posts by email, subscribe here. Please note; these are sent from a third party, you’ll want to click thru to read the post here on the blog to avoid their annoying ads. 

All material © 2009-2024 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.

A Philly Garden Fling threefer

Regular readers are going to be spending time in Pennsylvania over the next few weeks. I've decided since the Philly Fling took place over a year ago, I really need to concentrate on powering through my remaining 2023 Fling garden visits. This post includes three of those gardens, the first one, Boulder Haven, belongs to Carol Verhake and we visited on Friday, when it was still dry. The rest of the weekend was very very wet.

There was a patio off the back of the home, with focal-point containers on the low wall.

A very photogenic moon gate marked the entrance into the woodland garden.

The name of the garden made reference to the many boulders peeking up out of the ground.

I think we all took turns sitting in the woven love shack (see the sign at the lower right hand corner).

Maybe Acorus gramineus ‘Minimus Aureus’? 

Whatever it is, it's fabulous!

Out front by the street I spotted a couple ferns tucked into the rock wall.

Always a good thing in my book.

The next garden, John Lonsdale's Edgewood, was an early Saturday morning stop. We were all getting acclimated to garden touring in a downpour. 

This whiskey barrel of mangaves was a surprise!

And cholla too!

Yucca rostrata backed by sarracenia.

Believe it or not I didn't make it inside the greenhouses.

I would have liked to, but others were vying to do so and as I recall they were filled with the owners cyclamen breeding efforts which wasn't a big draw for me. 

Wait, what? More mangaves! These must go into the greenhouses over the winter.

A tropical corner...

And this, which was really attractive in person and had many of us scratching our heads as to exactly what it was.

I believe it was Heather who finally identified it, Pollia japonica.

Wayne Guymon’s WynEden in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania rounds out this chapter of the Philly Fling. At 9.5 acres and boasting 15,000 hostas, 7,000 rhododendrons, 3 ponds, 3 streams and 5 acres of edited woodland I knew there was no way I was going to see it all...

Instead of trying, I just wandered and pointed my camera at what I found interesting.

The bamboo was all well trenched, to help keep it in check.

Fungus of all sorts was easy to find on this Fling.

Amaranthus tricolour

I did not make it over to the covered bridge, other Flingers did.

I think that pathway in the distance is the one I took down into the garden.

Looking back at the house (and some of the hostas) across the large pond.

Tricyrtis hirta, perhaps 'Lightning Strike'.

More wet garden tours to come!

To receive alerts of new danger garden posts by email, subscribe here. Please note; these are sent from a third party, you’ll want to click thru to read the post here on the blog to avoid their annoying ads. 

All material © 2009-2024 by Loree L Bohl. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited and just plain rude.