Mountaintop is the name we have given our Vermont garden. It sits 1,300 feet up alongside a dirt road that connects the towns of Dorset and Danby here towards the southern end of the state. The land was once used for sheep farming but has since reverted to hardwood forest with red oaks, maple, and beech trees dominating the landscape. Our house has its origins as a logging cabin and nestles close to the road with the majority of our nine acres sloping away through a series of tiers created by the eroding bedrock.

Previous owners had cleared and gardened a small portion of the land. We have extended the gardens and cleared the understory of the woodland successively since 2012, opening up a series of new and exciting spaces each with its own character and opportunity.

Gardening here is not easy. The land is rocky with little soil which means we have to make creative use of containers, embankments, deep beds, and other methods of providing depth for plants.  Despite this, nature has been generous to us: we have a natural spring that feeds a stream running year-round through the lower parts of the property before cascading down a deep cut in the bedrock and disappearing towards the Mettowee river.  The larger number of glacier borne moss-covered rocks that are scattered throughout the property give it a Japanese quality that we have accentuated by exposing the bedrock in places. We exploit the poor quality of the soil through the use of plants suited to Mediterranean conditions. And we use the crevices in the rock face itself to plant things like lavender — the warmth of the rock in winter allows us to grow plants outside of their normal zone range.

Mountaintop is certainly a challenging place to garden, but the rewards are enormous.  The views through to the surrounding mountains, the abundance of wildlife, the serenity of those still summer evenings with the sound of the running stream, and the seclusion provided by the forest all more than compensate for the effort. We have put down roots here, perhaps not as deeply as those of our famous 125 year old red oak, but deeply enough to enjoy our Vermont garden to the full. We hope that visitors to VtGarden.com enjoy Mountaintop too.