America's Best Private Gardens Include Nutley Home
• Visitors Welcomed Today at Silas Mountsier Home
Apr 21, 2012 – A national HomeGarden Preservation program today has been joined by Silas Mountsier who is opening his private gardens to visitors as part of the national celebration.
Mountsier's home at 205 Rutgers Place will welcome visitors between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Here's a description written by Mr. Mountsier for a national publication:
"I love my garden! I have gardened my land earnestly with many successes and yes, some failures. Some 18 years ago my garden needed a makeover and I most fortunately hired Richard Hartlage. To me, Richard is a talented garden designer and my garden was given new life and expanded from a half-acre to more than two acres.
"For a long time now, I have tried to describe what my garden is in words. I have not found them but Bob La-Hoff in an article in The Gardener News did and I quote "as a classical stroll garden with exciting twists and turns. Hidden garden rooms, a clumping grove of bamboo (Fargesia rufa), geometric hornbeams cut into rectangular pillars, a huge sweep, some 10,000 of Japanese forest grass (hakonechloa), a huge hill of liriope, named Mount Sier, are just a few of the highlights awaiting the visitor.
"A feeling of privacy and ease immediately calms you as you leisurely walk this magnificent garden and stare at the nearly 180 outdoor art objects. Two highlights, for me, were the baboon garden and a mass planting of Rohdea japonica. A granite baboon sits peering through some tropicals, at the foot of a bed, mass planted with dwarf mondo grass (Ophiopogon japonicus 'Nanus').
"Rohdea is a seldom-seen, tough perennial with broad strap-like, evergreen leaves. Its appearance is exotic especially when the clumps of winter red berries appear." And of Richard Hartlage he writes "His visions are quantum and his implementations are timeless…clearly one of today's best designers."
"Now I invite you to come and join me and wander in the garden in its early spring dress."
The Mountsier home is off of Rutgers Place, "at the top of the hill when the road flattens, #205 is on the right."
