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photograph by : Matthew Benson .
It is commonly say that landscape painting architect are pro with structure and amateur when it comes to plant . The cliché about plantsman and nurserymen is that they ’re so interfering concentre on individual species , they lose sight of the big picture . Judy Murphy , though , is that rare garden master who sees it both ways . Trained as a landscape architect , she can worst up a site plan for even the slipperiest incline . But she ’s also a seasoned nurserywoman who waxes poetic about the latest cultivars and adjudge chartreuse foliage the ultimate impersonal .
Murphy ’s home garden — which share 25 acres in Lakeville , Connecticut , with her business concern , Old Farm Nursery — is live proof of her astray - ranging gift . Like a aim portfolio diffuse out across the earth , it shows her mastery of the sunny flower border and the soothe shade garden , her talent with a loose grassy island and a formal potager . There ’s a swim kitty near the house , a naturalistic pond farther out . Murphy seems to have it all .
Every gardener have intercourse the fancy : Quit the rat race , move to the country , fix up an onetime farmhouse , and pass your days outdoors , running your own glasshouse and garden design byplay . Get back to the land , simplify , relax … '' Yeah , sure , '' express joy Murphy . '' You think it ’s loose to work 15 - hour mean solar day , seven days a workweek , from March to December ? Talk about stress . Imagine the 93rd Clarence Shepard Day Jr. without rain , when everything you ’ve ever planted is dying . And forget about get away in a modest town . If you go out to dinner party , you ’re surrounded by client . ' This is n’t about getting away from it all . I am always , totally and altogether , skirt by it all . Of course , '' she adds sheepishly , '' I do n’t really do it what it ’s like to work in an office . ''
The thought never crossed her mind . When Murphy travel off to Cornell University , she — like many undergrad in the early 1970s — gave little thought to conventional , desk-bound success . '' I did n’t want to study concretion in a windowless classroom , '' she enjoin . '' I took beekeeping and art chronicle and botany and agronomy , whatever I like . Together , it all began to look like landscape painting computer architecture . '' After college , Murphy left the Northeast to aid constitute the gardens at the famed Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs , West Virginia , where she was the only woman on an all - male landscape painting gang . '' It was the hard thing in the world , '' she recall . '' I was nominate the same $ 2.20 an minute as the adult male , so I had to prove I could take in it the same way of life . I almost killed myself digging holes in the ground . But I learned that there ’s an amazing choreography to how mass ferment physically together , the way they move around each other with pickax and digger . I wound up loving it . ''
So much so that she get hitched with one of her fellow work party members , West Virginian Patrick Murphy . And though she pull up stakes the crew after a few year to open her own landscape painting business , Murphy stayed in West Virginia for more than a decade . '' Like many Yankees , I came expecting stark coal - mining country , with the forests clear - switch off . It ’s actually one of the most beautiful places on Earth . I could have stayed there forever , '' she suspire . '' But , unlike me , Pat had never lived anywhere else , and he was ready to take a risk . ''
So in 1988 — with their 2 - year - sometime son , Cory , and another , Greg , on the mode — the couple move to northwestern Connecticut . It was tightlipped to Judy ’s class , she explains , but '' the landscape painting looked like West Virginia , all knotty and jolting , with fantastic views . '' She and her husband find an early-1800s dolophine hydrochloride - upper on a farmstead near the small town of Lakeville and hung up their Old Farm Nursery sign . '' Our first client , '' she laughs , '' was our plumber . Then we designed a garden for a neighbor . He liked what we did , and told the people down the route , who mention us to someone across the street . We never advertised . '' The Murphys have since designed , installed — and , in many cases , maintained — garden for more than 200 guest . The glasshouse , which handle 10 acres and fills all seven of the farm ’s outbuildings , now sell garden ornamentation and furniture , as well as plants . And the pas de deux that Judy and Pat give on the landscape crowd has evolve into an elaborate dance execution . '' I ’m like the theater director , '' she explains , '' and Pat ’s the manufacturer . I ’m horrible . I spew out designs and ideas a mile a minute , and then I ’m on to the next affair . If it were n’t for Pat , nothing would happen . He make everything real . '' During the busy season , a staff of 10 , admit Pat ’s father , helps out .
As business sector skyrocketed , though , Murphy spent less meter in her own backyard . '' For a client , I sit down , pull up a plan , and we install everything at once . But our garden happened bit by bit , which is how everyone ’s garden happens if they do n’t employ someone else to do it . '' In the beginning , if a nursery shrub came off the truck with a busted limb , Murphy would stick it in her yard . trenchant garden areas evolved as she look for for solution to everyday problems : '' The kids were small , so I involve a fenced pace for them to bring in . I wound up try out with a recurrent border in there . I wanted secrecy from the road , so I planted a course of fast - growing arborvitae . It ’s the usual stuff mass deal with : I wanted fresh green groceries , so I set aside an field for edibles ; I needed a way to get from the garage to the back of the house , so I pose a brick path and began planting around it . ''
Despite Murphy ’s Everyman approach , the sprawling result is far from common . '' Please , '' she demurs , '' I do n’t do all of this myself . '' Because the garden helps fire the business — attracting new node , render existing ones how a bush will look , even getting the occasional baby’s room client excited — some business resource , like stave and money , go toward keep it maintained . '' Our lawn has to be mowed , '' she excuse . Even so , Murphy admits that it ’s only in the past few yr that her position has really come together , and she ’s still alright - tuning . '' No nurseryman ever looks upon a garden as finished . To other masses that may seem scary . To me , it would be frightening if I could n’t switch things . I care that I can always rive this out and put something else in . ''
Spend a day explore her dimension , though , and it ’s hard to imagine what , if anything , Murphy could add . Out by the road , grass and daylilies shake around a strong core of evergreens . Pull into the driveway , and your center are bombarded by pots , trough , and obelisks in front of a ruby barn . one C of trees , shrubs , and perennials stretch into the distance . come here from the city is like go to the grocery store on an empty belly . And you ’ve only glimpsed the nursery … Murphy ’s garden start on the other side of the driveway , with a profusion of roses climb a sentry fencing — the one build for the nestling . Inside , the perennial border , which riffle around the lawn , attend at first like a sweet , old - fashioned bungalow garden , but closer inspection uncover a wry sentience of humor . Lurking amid peony and rosiness are the vast , outrageous leave of a Cynara cardunculus ; at regular intervals , standard - prepare crab apple trees and funky iron tower rise from mounds of veronica and bachelor’s - button . This is enough , you think , looking around . I would be well-chosen with this one perfect plot of land .
Then your eye enchant the brick way . You abide by it and find yourself in a shade garden , where astilbe , lady ’s mantle , and nicotiana cool down off beneath blanched birches . The path leads you far behind the family , into yet another room . This one is actually just a lawn shaded by a vast Norway maple . But branchlet furniture and '' walls '' — peak borders on each side and a wooden grape pergola at the back — transform the space from a apparent backyard into a knowing take on classic American simplicity .
Later , after you ’ve discover the swimming kitty tucked discreetly behind the arbor , when you feel that you ca n’t possibly nibble one more morsel of this horticultural feast , Murphy wait on up her main course . Across the backyard , opposite the shade garden , there ’s a gateway flank by two old terra - cotta lamp chimney pot . Step through them , and there , hidden from the highway by arborvitae , is the most spacious way yet . Only this one does n’t have a back wall . When the row upon rows of vegetables at long last finish , the garden opens up again , framing an endless blue sky and rolling hills flecked with red barn . dead , despite all of Murphy ’s earlier warnings , you see the huge possibilities of body politic living . And you want it bad .
She understands . '' This is n’t sluttish , '' Murphy says again , '' but if you ’re prosperous , the employment can make you impertinent . We ’re slaves to the conditions , and it can be frustrating . But we ’re also in sync with it . To be so intimate with nature , with soil and icing and sun and rain , is awing . It connects you to something big , gives you a agency of seeing something much bountiful than yourself . And you ca n’t buy that on Wall Street . ''
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