Text by Tovah Martin
Kit Sagendorf dreamed of downsizing. After living for decades in a massive Victorian house surrounded by meticulously maintained plantings, cutting back was her goal. When Kit and her husband, Marty, moved to a modest New England ranch house on 2 acres in 2010, she planned to leave intensive gardening in her past—no more extensive beds spilling with flowers, no more laborious hours weeding borders. Now, she was going to retire.
But then, the 1967 ranch desperately needed personality. “Let’s just say it: the house was boring,” says Kit, who knows from a lifetime of experience as a gardener that a carefully crafted setting can go a long way towards lending character to a home. So, she found a solution with individuality.
An easily maintained garden with mood didn’t happen in the blink of an eye. Fortunately, Kit retired with plenty of vim and vigor on reserve, because five years of preparing the soil around the home ensued. “I liked the flat frame of land around the house,” Kit says, recalling her first impressions. “But I should have delved deeper into the site because it is essentially a ledge with a thin layer of poor, sandy glacial fill.” Initially, the Sagendorfs found that the landscape was barely capable of supporting sparse grass. One solution was to build retaining walls to hold soil and plantings where the former naked ledge was unable to nurture plant life. In addition, immediately surrounding the house, Kit created a gravel terrace with a pergola and planters for an area to bask in the outdoor ambience. When a friend offered the Sagendorfs a vintage greenhouse, the couple gratefully accepted, adding the structure to visually anchor the scene.
What really lent mood and meaning to the garden was the Sagendorfs’ collection of antiques. From vintage urns, British garden signs, and a sundial to old lightning rods used as garden stakes and watering pots staged as accents, the antiques give the garden roots. It’s an eclectic amalgamation with considerable whimsy. For continuity and definition, the Sagendorfs syncopate the scene with grindstones and millstones in varying sizes, styles, and provenances. Those round accent pieces with a past serve as a recurring theme. “And the beauty of grindstones and millstones is that they roll,” Kit enthuses. “You can easily move them at will.”
How did she pull it all together? In addition to being a gardener, Kit is an artist. She can visualize scenes in her mind’s eye before installation. Using that artistic talent, planning the layout was a piece of cake for Kit. “The greenhouse served as the farthest anchor, but everything needs to be connected,” she says. “I mapped it out in my mind.” Knowing the view from the kitchen windows would be important, Kit worked out sight lines from that room. With an artist’s sense of color, she wove whites and pale yellows closest to the house, moving outward to soft oranges to serve up a visual punch. For plants, she selected only amiable, easy options rather than finicky prima donnas. “I chose only gladiators,” she explains, “no roses or peonies.” Siberian iris, various poppies, boxwood, and catmint are favorites, and lines of espaliered dwarf fruit trees create a vertical element.
Beyond the visual dimensions and focal points, Kit needed to plan for pathways throughout the space. The terrace configuration leads to an easy flow while stepping stones also guide movement. Although the scene is succinct, highlights along the way give a sense of adventure as well as ambience. And suddenly, the ranch became a quaint cottage with character to spare. With a nod toward the past, Kit created a future that’s manageable while every moment is highlighted with depth and meaning.
