by Elizabeth S. Schumacher and H. Ralph Schumacher Jr., MD

Twenty four years ago after my husband Ralph completed a Harvard fellowship in rheumatology and accepted a job at the University of Pennsylvania, we moved from Boston to Philadelphia into a house we could afford at the base of an exceedingly steep, treeless, eroded, one acre hillside. We never dreamed that more than two decades later we would still be in the same house held by our love of a garden that started out as sheer necessity and grew into a thing of beauty. 

The first steps offered little premonition of what would eventually evolve. We repaired the stabilizing walls started by the previous owners and after some false starts, established ground covers to hold the slopes and prevent the streams of water and mud which had plagued the laundry room.  Walls and terraces followed natural contours and created seperate outdoor spaces on five different levels that could each be treated individualy with selected plant material. After starting with the tried and true Rhodedendron 'Roseum Elegans' which have reliable year round healthy rich foliage, we joinded the Rhododendron Society and began acquiring less common varieties.  Collections of late blooming oriental Satsuki and Nakaharai azaleas are now clustered in several areas. Having lived in Japan as a child, I designed a Japanese style garden house which provides seating to view the more distant hills and a hidden lawn near the top of our hill. Rhododendron mucronulatum 'Cornell Pink' were clustered around a small Parrotia persica which has befun to grow into a beautiful, multistemmed sculptural tree with subtle red flowers in late winter.

We then began to get interested in small ornamental trees and barks that have year round interest. We bought a Prunus serrula from a mail order catalog and set it at the base of the uppermost slope where it could be surrounded with bright annual flowers to contrast with its red peeling bark.  Not all plants had to be purchased. A seedling of a Magnolia soulangeana popped up, presumably from a bird dropping, and now grows in front of a small grassy plateau.

We splurged on a stone Japanese lantern as another oriental accent that could be rediscoved from several different angles as one walked around the garden.  Because of the topography, there were more than the normal number of opportunities to place non-plant accents at key locations so we began to look for special things.  On a trip to Mexico we found an antique stone lion at the pawn shop near the Zocolo in Mexico City.  As Ralph began to get more invitations to lecture, we began taking time to look for other garden pieces and next added a temple dog from Thailand that we set on a vinca covered incline just behind the house. I started studies at the Barnes Arboretum School of Horticulture and as the garden became more shady, picked unusual hosta to line the path to the vegetable garden and perennial border.  Steps were key on a hill and we used different styles with woodchips between railway ties in more informal areas and flagstone steps lined by privet hedge providing the main flight up the hill. A curved hedge on one side helped make a graceful transition from the formal area close to the house to a wooded area. As the garden evolved and we decided that we really weren't going to move, we added a two story plantroom, bedroom addition that allows us to look out into the garden and enjoy it all year round.  A variety of needled evergreens provided structure; juniper ground covers made dense weed resistant mats.  As time went by, there was less and less room for more varieties of plant material or special garden ornaments, but we still enjoyed looking for them. Since friends kept asking us for advice and sources, and as there were so few places to go to buy anything but mass produced garden ornaments, I started "Garden Accents" in 1979, a business specializing in antique and other quality garden ornaments, fountains, planters, benches, ect.  We added several benches from my inventory to provide additional relaxing and viewing areas.  A teak bench was placed on a small plateau, and an antique iron bench near the entrance to the house.  Another project was to install a small fish pool nestled into the top hillside with three Stewartia pseudocamellia to shelter the sitting area.  The Stewartia  have white camellia-like flowers in the summer and rich peeling bark with brown and rose tones. Other interstng barks among our collention are Pinus bungeana, Maackia amurensis and Acer griseum. In visits to arboreta in both Europe and the U.S.A. we kept being impressed by viburnum collections and Ralph began scattering these tolerant and versatile plants throughout the borders.  Viburnum dilitatum  outside the plantroom is one of the many shrubs with great berries for winter color. Although the basic structure of the garden has been established, there is always an oversized plant to be pruned or removed and a new area to be filled with color as with the grouping of iris in a perennial bed at the still sunny top of the hill.