Growing a grand garden

Plant in masses for dramatic effect. That's a tactic most gardeners admire, but few think on a really grand scale.

Imagine, then, a project that calls for at least 10,000 daffodils, 500 tons of stone and nearly 200 trees. Get your head around 10 varieties of grasses, from tall big bluestem to low-growing buffalo grass. Consider countless pounds of wildflower and prairie flower seeds.

Over the eight years that Estate Gardeners Inc. has been working at Seven Oaks on the Ridge, the acreage in the Ponca Hills of north Omaha has matured as a wildlife habitat for deer, wild turkeys and hawks, and as a home for Amy Scott and her family.

The project, submitted in the $500,000-and-over category, won the grand prize award this year in the 40th annual Environmental Improvement Awards program of PLANET (Professional Landcare Network), based in Herndon, Va.

“I bought the land in the late '90s,” said Scott, daughter of the late Carolyn Scott and Walter Scott Jr., chairman emeritus of Peter Kiewit Sons' Inc. “It had been in the same family for five generations. There was an old two-story house, with dirt floors, no plumbing, and bullfrogs.

“It overlooked a small meadow where the pond is now. I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to look out and watch the wildlife?”

She held the land for five years before deciding to build on it.

While work began on cleanup and preparing the site for two ponds, Scott had Robert Torson Architects, with Carey Zandt, the principal architect, build a house to replace the abandoned farmhouse. Built in the style of an English manor, the 5,000-square-foot house is faced in Arkansas fieldstone, blending in with the landscape.

Scott is an artist whose sense of whimsy shows in her use of architectural salvage in the stone facade and in various sculptures by other artists on the grounds.

For the landscaping, Scott interviewed four companies and found a match in Michael Becker and Pat Burleson, partners in Estate Gardeners, for the kind of habitat-friendly landscape she envisioned.

“Michael and I were on the same page,” she said. And that page grew into a book, over time.

“It started with the pond and became two ponds and three waterfalls.”

Visitors walk along the verdant path and say they can't believe the landscaping is so recent.

“‘It looks like it's been there forever' is the highest compliment you can pay,” Scott said.

The site offered everything: woods, hills, meadows, prairie and stream. But the project involved more than mere materials. Several local and national government agencies and various neighbors weighed in during the early stages of building ponds and waterfalls, concerned about Ponca Creek, which runs through the property.

Becker said he remembers the day final approval from the government entities came: 9/11/2001.

Estate Gardeners removed large quantities of trash from the spring-fed creek. Now, creek water is pumped up a steep hill and returned by way of a series of pools and waterfalls. Becker hand-selected boulders in Iowa, Wyoming and Colorado and carefully positioned them to work as paths and design elements.

Becker said the evolution of the project has meant carving out views from the road, the house and the yard. One area blends into another, with plantings repeated at various points on the road to the house.

On this grand palette, all four seasons get big play: Hellebores and ferns perk up in spring; coneflowers and black-eyed Susans bloom during the summer; oakleaf hydrangeas and fiery red sumac blaze during autumn; grasses wave above winter snows.

“Tulips are the things I love most, but so do the deer,” Scott said. “But with thousands of daffodils, this is spectacular in the spring, right out of House & Garden (magazine). And with all the naturalization, it looks like God put them here.”

Contact the writer:

444-1059, rhonda.stansberry@owh.com

« Living

Share