The Gardens of Glenridge Hall

   

             The forty-seven-acre forest of Glenridge Hall is  the "crown" into which are set the various "jewels" of its architecture and gardens.   The Hall is masterfully sited at the end of a  1,050'  high ridge looking west straight down a stretch of the Chattahoochee Valley.   From the main terrace there is a panoramic vista of Kennesaw, Sweat, and Blackjack Mountains.

             Although no record has surfaced of any specific landscape architect's guiding vision, the Glenns  did correspond briefly with the Olmstead brothers in the 30's about the possibility of designing a thirty-acre "Versailles-type" series of gardens, which the Glenns intended to open to the public.   When the cost estimate was calculated in Depression dollars, however, the idea was regretably abandoned. 

          Now, six decades later, we have set about uncovering, restoring and replanting the grounds.  The first major undertaking was to restore the four-hundred-foot long, eight-foot high, five-tiered Rock Garden, which banks the northern, western, and southern slopes of the upper terrace.

             Below the Rock Garden is the Lower Terrace with its twenty-eight raised beds and two-hundred-foot long Dorothy Perkins Rose Fence.   The focal point of the Lower Terrace is a fourteen-foot-square stone chess board whose oversized pieces await an afternoon match.

          Whenever possible, we have restored offspring of original species to where we think they were originally located.   Among the perennials which barely survived sixty years of neglect (but are now thriving again) are four types of climbing roses, columbine, yellow, violet, and white bearded iris, wild thyme, one type of sedum, one determined peony plant, single, double, and triple orange day lilies, an indefatigable pink sweet pea, St John's wort, several varieties of daffodil, and a whole host of wild flowers.  On the other hand, survivors which have tried to take over include English ivy (acres), vincas major and minor, wisteria, cudzu (introduced deliberately as an ornamental vine), poison ivy, cross vine, rose of Sharon, yaupon holly, nandina, bamboo, and, my most unfavorite weed of all, nut grass sedge.

            I would guess we have lost since 1985 more than 80% of our dogwoods, the "petticoat" of our forest, and I am worried that the woolly adelgid will discover our twenty-six mature hemlocks sooner or later.   We are blessed with acres of mountain laurel, but the rhododendron have not faired so well, and not one of the original cultivar azaleas has survived.   The magnolias, in contrast, have become invasive in the understorey.   Even the imported hemlocks along tthe driveway have seeded over a hundred new trees. 

            In addition to replacing what we think might have been here, we are also incorporating many varieties that did not exist in 1930.  If we like it and it has a reasonable chance here, you will probably see it somewhere in the gardens or forest.

        

 Future Landscape Projects

             On an elevated site in front of Glenridge Hall, there is a ten-foot-high three-tiered pre-Civil War cast-iron fountain flanked by two spouting Maitland-Smith bronze herons on stone "islands" in a twenty-foot wide circular pool.  The area around the fountain will become home to a collection of specimen shrubs and understory trees forming a great  garden room.

             The west path out to the little peninsula is under restoration as are two circular garden "rooms" along the way.   After years of contemplating the idea of a true folly out there, I have decided on a more practical use.  This summer we will build a 40' wide meditation circle or "labyrinth" modeled after the one in Chartres Cathedral, laid out in contrasting colors of cement.  For the west side of the circle, I have designed a 10' high half-domed seating niche with three wide semi-circular steps, flanked on either side by doric columns and two lattice panels for climbing roses.  The practicality is that this meditational space with its wonderful eastern view of the Hall will also seat up to 250 for garden weddings.   

 

            Now that the destructive flooding of the waterfall creek is somewhat controlled by an upstream weir, we will proceed with the restoration of the Secret Garden, a native stonework terrace built into the hill and the stream just below a long, wide, eight-step cascade. 

             The Secret Garden has a fireplace and chimney built into the steep hillside as well as two "built-in" stone benches, a stone foot bridge, and a curving stone staircase up the opposite side.    I can already picture the 100-year-old mountain laurels surrounding  the 20' long terrace twinkling with Chinese lanterns on a summer's evening.

             We are also making the quarter-mile looping waterfall trail more accessible as well as  building a rustic gazebo above for looking back at the 12' tall cascading falls.