Our Story
Why living on the side of a mountain with rocks, no soil and extreme weather is a perfect place to garden and call our home
It was the view not the garden that brought us here. There wasn’t a recognizable garden. We had thick overgrown grass that our realtor called a fire hazard and beyond that was dense undergrowth that merged into the forest beyond.
The one thing we did know was that there was a spring that fed a stream running towards the back of the property. Quite what was back there we had no idea. So it was definitely the view that brought us here.
The garden, if you could call it that, was completely overgrown and masked many of the hidden gems that we have grown to love. We bought the place because of the house – a crazy mix of old farmhouse slapped together with a modern extension that looks out over that view. It’s an architectural folly for sure but it suits us. And we felt extremely lucky to have been able to finally purchase a little house away from the hustle and bustle of New York City.
Each of the previous owners had their own idiosyncratic vision of gardening on Mountaintop. Idiosyncratic is word we use a lot here. Traditional flower beds sat side-by-side with unkempt natural grass designed to encourage wildlife. An old vegetable plot was lost beneath years of weeds. So overgrown was everything that we didn’t realize we had a pond — we actually have two — until we were standing right next to it.
Steadily though, as we cleared and rambled through, we realized that Mountaintop was a lot more than that view. A lot more. The topography was three levels of rocky shelf stepping down and ending where that stream fell down in a cascade where it was joined by another stream that separates our property from the neighbor’s. Everywhere around were great mossy rocks calling out to be features of a curated landscape. And standing proud on the level above the pond was a great red oak.
On the first night we stayed in the house we saw a black bear wander past. We have seen bear every year since. Getting used to sharing Mountaintop with its wild inhabitants has been an unexpected but great pleasure. Besides bear our fellow residents include fox, skunk, raccoons, deer, possum, turkeys, and a bobcat. The birds too seem to appreciate being here. Watching the hawks or the eagle hang in the air current above the mountain is something we look forward to every summer.
Opening up that landscape, clearing brush, excavating the ponds, moving tons of soil, exposing stretches of the bedrock, and creating planting pockets down the slopes was a great team effort. The late Jerry Merrow and his team, Eric Hyatt and his team, and, of course the folks at both our local nurseries have been our partners in creating what Mountaintop has become.
We are lucky. We are ten years into our gardening lives here. There’s a long way to go — more gardens to create and more plants to experiment with.
And, always, in the background is that view.