Roxana Robinson—Treetop

On the grounds of a family Arts and Crafts house built in 1928 is an idiosyncratic hillside garden incorporating granite ledge, steep ravines, placid greensward, and a wooded slope leading down to a lake. The gardens themselves are separated into two areas. First the well-mannered, level terrain of "Sissinghurst," with a decorous palette of blues, pinks, silvers, and purples, stone paths, and emerald lawn. Then "Margaritaville," a wild and rocky ravine with a riot of giant ferns, orange Tithonia, scarlet crocosmia, red salvias, and orange asclepias. Around the gardens are deep woods full of ferns and birches; within the garden is a small homemade frog pond. Here nature plays a larger part than nurture. At the front of the house is a fine view of the lake. The owner's grandfather was a nature writer, her parents were birdwatchers, and the owner writes about the natural world in her novels. The gardens are an attempt to make peace between the wild and the domestic, a response to the powerful surrounding landscape of dense woodlands, steep hillsides, boulders, and ravines.