👉Talk & Tour: How to Build a Garden From Scratch with Cynthia Chapra

Garden of Cynthia Chopra in Weston, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. Cynthia, thank you so much for having us to your beautiful garden. It's a pleasure. Thank you for coming. And you were telling me that you consider this to be a gardener's garden. Can you tell me a little bit about what you mean by that? It's a little bit wild and crazy and it's got interesting plants that a lot of people don't have and so it's interesting for gardeners to walk through. Things are not placed just so. It's, you know, it all is not just mulch and plant. It's crafted to look like there's something interesting everywhere with textures and sizes. Hopefully I've accomplished that. I would say you have. It's a three acre garden, right? Three and a half. Three and a half acres and you are out here pretty much every day working in the garden. I am. I am. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about what your what your daily routines are out here. What are you? Well, my daily routines. First thing is walk the dogs around the garden and then I start seeing what I need to do during the day. I unfortunately am obsessed about getting rid of weeds, so a lot of weeding. But, you know, it's it's deciding when to divide plants, you know, what's gotten a little bit too crowded, what needs pruning, has the light changed or things starting to brown up and do I need to move them or what is going on with those plants. So it's sort of a walk around. I do a first walk around to see if anything is suffering or if there's a real big concentration of weeds and then I decide what I'm going to do next. And would you say that's kind of how your garden has expanded too? Because it seems like you have a lot of repetition in the garden. So is, you know, seeing what needs to be divided helped you to fill it out? Well, it yes. When I first moved here, I actually drew out what I wanted this garden to look like. I had paths in and, you know, my hills, everything that came with the house, I had it all put in there. And three and a half acres is a lot of plant material. So I've had to, you know, friends bring me their plants. If friends move, they bring me plants they don't want to lose, you know, they want to give them to me so that they can see them again. So I have lots of friends plants here. But to cover the space, you have to divide. And so I have divided and rescued plants, you know, from the, you know, this is a fifty dollar tree type of a thing or people giving me twigs or, you know, so I filled it in with plants and it looks so totally different from what it began with. It's hard to imagine how far it's come because I first started by moving shrubs away from the house out into the garden so that I would have some big things to start with and build around. I think you were telling me too that you've relied a little bit on the plants to tell you where they're happy or where they work because you do have a lot of volunteers, right? I do. And things that you move, that you edit, so. Right, yeah, so I do. I know that a butterfly bush will not live in my garden. Okay, so there are a number of things that really, really like it here and and they will move and then sometimes I will move them, you know, to places where I think they'll like it. And, you know, so they do tell you, like some semisfuga moves itself all over. And every year I don't know where the lobelia are going to come up because they're in a different place every year. But, yeah, the plants tell you if they like it where they are and certain plants do really well and certain plants just will not thrive at all here. Can we go take a look at some of the garden? Yes, why don't you come right over here? I've divided a lot of the hosta over here. I started with three. Oh my goodness. And there are 32 there now and I think I started with one of the heuchera there and I've moved a lot of the hydrangea away from the house. I keep cutting it out and moving it because it gets huge. But most of this was, there were just plants right up against the house and every year I try to take a little more lawn away. And this is a place that I like to grow my dahlias, although they haven't bloomed very much this year. But it's a cool place to build with color. I think there's good color here with everything. There is and you have a lot of texture too with the different leaf shapes. I notice you have some bleeding heart back there. And they're blooming. Re-blooming. Weird, yeah. I know they're re-blooming and that's not a usual thing. But yeah, but unfortunately I also have some phryda stilbe because it's been just so dry this year. It's been hard for a lot of things. Yes. And then I have my acinthera there which I love the bobbing little white flowers always just add a little bit of interest in the in the garden. So this section of the garden I call the hill because it's a hill. But I wanted to put a pathway through here and then some steps to get up the hill. You know I'm trying to avoid using mulch more so creeping time is a big deal. And just, you know, trying to repeat plants and my sculpture. Yes. You're an artist as well. Yes, yes. A stained glass sculpture there. And all these rocks. You see a lot of big rocks around here and they're from this property. Some of the steps are not. So I just wanted this to curve through here. So my arborist actually helped me lay this path down and I learned how to sling these big stones which we bought at a a nursery. And I learned how to sling the stones and position them. So we did this and then put some of my big boulders around here. On the edge. On the edge, yeah. So you can get up to the top of the hill but it it adds some interest. And it gave me a place to put this very strange Japanese maple that just looks like it's a very long thing. Yes. Because it's it was growing that way. So we put it there and it's perfect because part of what I wanted to do on this hill was to make it look like plants were streaming down. So I have a lot of repetition and different textures with hostas and grasses. And unfortunately I lost a tree here so a lot of my European ginger got burnt this year. So I have to come up with something to transition to more sun than what it's been in the back in the past. So that is a work in progress. But you know you can look at this and just see that there's a lot of dividing. Yes. A lot of dividing. Like somebody gave me a little bit of this this grass and I've divided it. Pulmonaria divided it. My lakothwi. I love lakothwi and I've you know divided that. Yes. People gave me kuringashoma and it is it is wonderful here. Unfortunately this year it's been so dry that my painted fern which usually covers this. I've got a burgundy painted fern is just little stems. It's terrible. So usually it looks really pretty but now it doesn't look so pretty and some of my hostas have suffered as well. But still you see you definitely see the the flow. Right. Sort of almost streams of plants coming down the hill. Yes and that was the intention was to do that and then putting some big things up so that you feel like you're sort of in a separate place than out on the lawn. And I think that the the big grasses you know do that really pretty well for this area. And then one of my favorite places to sit is right up at the top on that that bench which is the most comfortable place to sit in the garden. And I love sitting there and just looking out over the garden to see what there is. And you make time for that right? You're not always I yes when I'm weeding up there I go sit for a little while. Or when I'm trying to decide you know what do I need to do. I've got places to sit around the yard to just sit there and look at it and say oh what's doing well what's not doing well what am I missing? Do I have too many things that are the same you know size or texture? And so it's good for that. Yeah so that is my hill. But this used to be all poison ivy and it had lots of garlic mustard and other wonderful things that you do not want in your garden. Right so how did you go about getting rid of all of that was it? Lots of poison ivy. I pulled it I pulled it. I don't believe in spraying things so and I don't fertilize either so I pulled a lot of it. At first I got a guy who was the poison ivy guy that was his name the poison ivy guy and he came and he said that I had the most varieties of poison ivy in my garden that he'd ever seen. So he put me on his website as the queen of poison ivy. So he helped me do the first clearing and then I've been you know digging it up and trying not to get poison ivy. Yeah so you just have to keep after it but I think it's most effective to dig it out to dig the roots out. Yeah. So now I hardly ever see any poison ivy in here which is good. So Cynthia you were telling me you have an area of the garden you think of as your color garden so could we take a look at that? Yes it's right this way this is the back way to it and it is just color. It's colorful it's like I didn't choose a color. I've planted things over the years and I allow things to reseed. I have but you'll see many different varieties of marigolds different shapes and sizes and many different colors of snap dragons which I love and just every year it reseeds and I'll move the amaranth someplace. These cosmos come back every year and the colchium which I'm not sure I'm the autoblooming crocus. Yes. Is amazing I started with like six bulbs you know and they've multiplied every year so now I have really big display everywhere but like and then things choose where they're going to grow because I didn't plant all these you know where they are. Right. And sometimes if I get a bunch of seeds in one place I'll dig them up and move them so that it's distributed more so that it's just not one color in one place so people don't think that I'm really trying to match the color you know that it's just it is just a mess of color. Yes it's beautiful it's you know it's just so interesting because it's not necessarily colors that you would put together but they work together somehow. Maybe it's like rainbow I sort of think it is it's a rainbow it's not it's not a choice of colors because like I don't really like pink. You see there's a lot of pink here isn't there but it goes with you know things if you look at little tidbits you know it's great but I just say hey it's like a rainbow and you know it's just very vibrant and everybody can find something in here that they like the color of. Yes and I love how they play off each other and pick up different notes from each other like your amaranth I think. Yes. With the cosmos like this is a very sort of rose color and then with the peach and the yellow tones just the way they're tangled together is it really does look good together and I think with the red twig dogwood I've got midwinter fire back there but the leaves are always a little bit yellower than green you know so there's a good backdrop of color there as well which I like. Cynthia thank you so much for sharing your garden with us today it has been such a treat to walk through here see some of your treasured plants and just hear about the love and effort that you've put into creating this space. Well I thank you for I love having people come to my garden and this garden has been not only made by me but other people have contributed greatly you know with plant material and with items objects in the garden so I've been very lucky and to build this garden with my friends and and and we have under the big maple tree there during the summertime we have prosecco under the maple tree so people will bring stuff to eat and we have prosecco and we walk around the garden there's always something new and bloom and it's great I love having people in the garden I appreciate you coming to see it today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Sorry babe.