Chanticleer, A Pleasure Garden with Adrian Higgins

A Rebroadcast of: An Exceptional Work of Garden Art

In the book Chanticleer: A Pleasure Garden, writer Adrian Higgins and photographer Rob Cardillo chronicle one of the most innovative, ambitious and ultimately successful gardens in America. The author, the garden editor of the Washington Post, is our guest this week. Chanticleer is a forty-eight-acre garden on Philadelphia's historic Main Line. It is “many things simultaneously: a lush display of verdant intensity and variety, an irreverent and informal setting for inventive plant combinations, an homage to the native trees and horticultural heritage of the mid-Atlantic, [and] a testament to one man's devotion to his family's estate and legacy…” Adolph Rosengarten Jr., left the property for the enjoyment and education of the public following his death in 1990. There were no stipulations as to whether certain elements had to be preserved. Rather, the directive was to create “A Pleasure Garden,” and to nurture that notion with art and ever-changing planting. The garden opened to the public in 1993.
(Photo, left, by Rob Cardillo: Alliums in the Tennis Court [and now perennial] Garden including the shorter, dark Allium hollandicum ‘Purple Sensation’, and taller lighter purple Allium ‘Gladiator’. These drumsticks provide a complementary hue to the vibrant amber, red and gold new growth of the great shrub Spirea x bumalda ‘Magic Carpet’.)
For more on visiting Chanticleer, and for the book, visit the website of The University of Pennsylvania Press.

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MP3 File