“It brings character into the garden, makes it feel of the period the
house was built, focusing on plantings that feel Edwardian.”
It was important to both Maynard and Roth that the garden be
an unfurling discovery. “The idea was that it can’t be seen all in one
gulp,” says Roth, “that it invites you to come out into it and discover
it.” This was achieved by creating a series of rooms delineated with
double yew hedges inspired by the gardens at Sissinghurst and dry-
stacked antique sandstone walls.
Maynard began as he does all his projects, by driving around the
neighborhood to see the local architecture and plantings, picking
up on the preponderance of dogwoods and rhododendrons. “I
wanted to incorporate that language,” he says. He also added holly
and Fastigiate beeches to mirror glimpses of bordering yards. “The
only trees that haven’t been moved here are the ones you couldn’t get
your arms around,” admits Roth of their copious mature arboreal
plantings, facilitated by local landscaper Charlie Marder.
The plot originally featured a drive-in, drive-out layout that
dominated the front yard, but Maynard relegated the parking lot
to the front corner of the property and sank it several feet. He then
turned the front garden into an explosion of blush Heritage roses,
apricot-hued foxgloves, dark-eyed Royal Wedding poppies, and Cafe
au Lait dahlias anchored by an axis of Sir Edwin Lutyens–inspired
striped French bricks, antique bluestone borders, and narrow rills.
The centerpiece is an Italian marble wishing well that was original
to the house and reconceived as a fountain.
“It’s the same process as custom couture,” says Roth of the col-
laboration with Maynard, Haynes, and Roberts (Roth’s own cou-
ture collection and theatrical dressing have made the producer an
Instagram fashion favorite). He’s standing in the cutting garden,
cupping a gently ribbed white cosmos, surrounded by sunflowers
a foot taller than his six-foot-one, stem-thin frame. Silver birch
arches climb with sweet peas; a path of crushed quartz and stone
sown with lady’s mantle and thyme is underfoot. “I love flowers that
dance,” adds the Moulin Rouge! and Hadestown producer, who is
no stranger to a red-carpet shimmy—in fact, there are Instagram
GIFs memorializing them.
Ringing the back perimeter is what Roth calls the Secret Garden,
or the Woodland Walk, where a shaded path of yews and Victorian
ferns mingles with the property’s original London planes and beech-
es. “A magic secret place for Levi, but also to give you a relationship
to these extraordinary historic trees,” says Roth, marveling at the
sculptural gnarled trunks of the yews. “The entire garden was con-
ceived with what I imagined Levi would do in it,” he adds. “What is
the most joyful place he can play in and imagine in, and every time
he fills one of those places I just melt.” The toddler is known to
explore the striped French brick rills in the front garden, climb inside
the pear- and apple-shaped woven willow sculptures, and, as of this
summer, spend hours splashing around in the pool. His third birth-
day, purple in honor of his favorite color (menu: purple potatoes,
purple cauliflower), was held poolside under pollarded plane trees.
“The joy for me is watching the garden evolve and grow,” says
Maynard. The balance must be struck between a flowering garden
rich in romance and one with enough structure and division so that
during winter, “when you look from windows you’re not looking at
acres of brown grass or soil,” says the designer, who describes the yew
and boxwood hedges as the spine linking the rooms of the garden.
“You want to create veils,” Maynard adds, “like theater base sets, to
allow the eye to travel through.” All you need is an expert producer. @315
WOULDN’T IT BE LOVELEE?
Jackson, holding their three-year-old, Levi, and Roth before dry-stacked sandstone walls that border the two-acre
property. “The entire garden was conceived with what I imagined Levi would do in it,” Roth says.