Hollyhock and Edgecliff Cottages ~Summer Garden Tour~ Mackinac Island

[Music] hey there everybody welcome to beautiful mackinac island we are gonna be touring through two of my absolute favorite cottage gardens today we have holly hot cottage and edge cliff we're gonna go up through one and down through the other this is gonna be absolutely awesome let's dive in [Music] so like i said this is hollyhock cottage named after the iconic blooms that have always historically come reaching right out of this white picket fence and these stunning fuchsia colored hollyhocks are looking absolutely peak form right now so we'll step right in some of my crew is here we'll probably catch up to them in the back so as you can see they've just fresh mowed the lawn it's looking great but this one wow holly hot cottage underwent a tremendous transformation about six years or so now we dove into this one and it was dramatically different as you'll see we'll we'll put some photos up of before and afters as we go through these tours but this one was you know very very very different and the the owners came up to me and said you know jack we're thinking about uh adding on and putting an addition on the house and at the same time that we do that we want to you know make sure that we're doing the landscaping so that the place looks really good as fast as possible and we have the gardens looking really really good you know right kind of in conjunction with all of the construction and and renovation work so a large team of us all contractors got together to dream this one up and there was no landscape drawing or anything like that it was all completely you know kind of off the cuff and we were literally shaping this one as we went and as we dug in right off the bat you can see it's just incredible architecture and the classic kasky kind of gingerbread victorian details there with the stars caskey was an architect who actually was the original architect of the grand hotel and he also designed and built this original small cottage here which as you'll see doubled in size with the addition so the first thing to note is all the impressive stone walls throughout this entire landscape we brought in over 275 tons of stone to build this landscape all the wall stone is out of wisconsin this is all eden wall stone it's known as a weathered face wall stone and granite boulders all this stuff is just absolutely stunning and the limestone is in the same geologic vein as mackinaw island so as it's patinaing out and weathering it matches and looks like a lot of the limestone that we have here on the island so as we peel back in through into the garden here you'll see these little stairs that we wove up through here and all this before was just a you know a big slope that was really difficult to mow and everything else so by shaping into here and forcing some of these tears in we've created some really really neat little pockets like i said the guys just came through and mowed so these haven't been put down quite yet but uh these beautiful chairs offer this awesome view out to the mackinaw bridge and the straits of mackinac and carriages going by and none of this was here at all so we created all these little new spaces and really dramatically changed the landscape while the home and cottage were being worked on so here you can see the addition it's no noted by the different siding and different windows that had to be done to make sure that it could always be noted in the future where the original cottage was and where the addition is so they weren't even allowed to match the original trim and original siding and everything like that so that this could architecturally always be identified as the original cottage now all of this siding was redone and the windows and everything were redone during this renovation but it still had to be done differently to show the difference between the the old and the new the reason it had to be all redone is when we started on this project this entire back corner of the original cottage was buried in dirt and mud this whole hillside that we're now retaining with all this stone and boulders was just burying the back of this cottage there was no retention the cottage had really just been let go for many many years and it was all rotted out we could reach in and grab handfuls of rotten like wood foundation so it really needed the love that it got and so during the excavation for this addition we had obviously set some big equipment in here to dig out for the foundation work and while those guys were here we took advantage of it and set some of these largest boulders some of these big big four foot monster granite boulders are probably you know a good 2000 pounds a piece and so all of these largest boulders were set during that time and as you can see this wall is really very very steep and all these boulders had to be strategically placed and set in order to retain all of this and allow for this addition you know to happen as soon as we got around the steepest part of the corner we were able to work our walls back in and get this wall style going again with the dry stacked stone work all this is dry stack again no mortar or cement work at all all this was all cut in and stacked by hand all this done by hand the um stone staircase here oh let me show you guys over on this side of the house too because this walkway is really really stunning this before when we first started this was just a a dirt path with some like treated four by four steps that kind of went down through the dirt and it worked it was cottagey it was totally fine for the way the cottage was but obviously with a big renovation like this and a tune-up and a clean up architecturally and everything that they did inside the landscape needed to match and complement so this walkway got totally reimagined and we did this really beautiful running bond pattern with this sand molded clay brick and feature a lot of really great shade perennials look at the way this japanese painted fern is just glowing right now in and amongst the ivy and the myrtle this lady fern here looking absolutely beautiful in all her glory there and hostas and again that same wall style just kind of picking up to tie the whole property together and in just the five or six years since we built all this you can see it's really patinaing out beautiful and getting all kinds of mossiness on it which i totally love it's awesome yeah this is all looking great the bruneras are all looking stunning right now and a garden like this where we just really loaded up with ground covers and mixed perennials has such good interest spring summer and fall and really doesn't require a tremendous amount of maintenance we can just let it go let things keep coming and going and then you know in the fall we got to come and cut all this stuff back all this herbaceous growth you know has to get cut back and composted but it'll all be right back next year without a problem so this stone staircase that goes up through the property again none of this was here at all the this entire bank and stone wall that we put in was about 30 feet further in we had to dig out 2 000 yards of material to be able to shape all this and allow for the addition that's 200 dump trucks full of material to be able to do this project and in doing so we shaped all these tiers and kind of created this whole space and while we had that equipment and machinery here we set like i said we set all these largest boulders and for quite a while all the boulders were set back here and we we didn't have time or you know we had the whole rest of the island to plant up and and a lot of other things to do so for a while it was just boulders on this big hillside going down and people thought oh jack what are you doing you know what are you thinking what are you dreaming up here because it was hard for people to see but i knew that but i could shape these tiers and really create all these cool spaces back here and i could see it you know with the lighting in and everything like that just looking absolutely magical back here and so in time when we got more time and got into the back of the property here and started building and shaping all these walls by hand it really started to take shape we were planting some of these big trees while we were building the walls like this big clump birch here beautiful amelankier there and a really cool tree that you guys gotta see here so up here there's this big tree i'll walk out over here let's see this big tree up here that big tree is a katsura tree and that was planted up there knowing that eventually that's going to have like a huge 60-foot canopy and it's going to outlive this amalenkyr tree and it's going to outlive that birch tree and that's totally fine the idea being that cat snow will eventually just drape over this whole patio space and this will continue to be this beautiful mixed shady garden here you can see the paccasandra is super super happy simmers fusia is sending up its late summer blooms these will be big white spire blooms there black lace sambucus this is a great plant look at that texture and color out of this thing and we just keep these things whacked back a little bit but you really can't hurt them just chopping at them a little bit to keep their shape and size down so that you can still see in through there and see those beautiful stilbies poking up there and it's all about making sure those little view ports are all looking great ah look at all this is still be back here blooming in like peak peak form right now so pretty so in through the back gate here now on the back of this property the back of all the west bluff properties is where the carriage houses are and traditionally these carriage houses would have you know housed carriages and their horses and their paddocks and stuff behind and the horses live in there and um and the caretakers quarters are above and several of these west bluff cottages still maintain that mackinac historic integrity and keeping the use and uh and just the historic nature of these properties alive this is one of them as well as edge clip so i'm going to take this debris that i cut as we were walking here real quick and throw it on this dray and a tray like that is set here so that we can throw all of our lawn waste all of our grass clippings and stuff like that can go up on there it all gets mixed in with the island's manure mixed in with all the hotel food scraps all those food scraps from all the you know restaurants and everything like that are all shredded up and they make this beautiful mackina island black gold compost it's a great product it's sold back to all of us gardeners and all of us mackinac islanders at a great price and we're able to use it for all these gardens and landscapes so just continually feeding the the gardens of the future here we've got a manure bin there not really all that attractive but to me that is future black garden goodness and i know that it will really feed and uh and nourish the um the gardens of the future so real quickly here we'll just look over at edgecliff's paddock and and their barn and everything here i wish you guys could smell the smells right now of these horses there's a really really sweet little pony over there saying hi to some folks that are visiting on the fence line there [Music] backside edge clip here features some beautiful colorful pockets as the entryway into the back of the cottage the uh the circle drive that goes in traditionally and historically would have been used for cottages to be able to or cottagers to be able to pull in be picked up for dinner taken downtown or you know to the grand hotel for dinner and drop back off in the back of the cottage oftentimes the front of the cottage wasn't necessarily used unless there were guests or something like that where it's a little bit more showy but the back of the cottage just like any of our homes is where you're always coming and going it's where the mud room is same thing up here but just a little different take on it so we'll jump right into edge clip here gosh these non-stop begonias are looking so stunning right now look at that beautiful beautiful color there and the combination with those variegated beautiful hostas and the big bank of brunei behind it as you can see some of the guys are here working away which is awesome getting the lawn mowed and tuned right up this last year the the client or the owner here at edgecliff wanted a hedge of hollyhocks and so we planted up a whole bunch of hollyhocks and they've come in this year absolutely beautiful and they look absolutely stunning we've got 30 hollyhocks planted in there they look awesome this is a cool little feature i like to point out we've been putting a lot of these into landscapes recently this is a little pondless waterfall system from aquascapes aquascapes.com i'm pretty sure is their website they're awesome guys and they'll send you a whole kit everything you need and they've got some great tutorial videos and everything online on how to do it but this is a recirculating system here very easy to put together and maintain we built this one about four years ago or so now it's got some little lights in it and and it's a really neat feature this little corner right here used to have nothing at all it was just kind of some weedy mess under the cedar tree and the the limbs of the cedar were much much lower we limbed it right up and forced this you know really neat little feature in here and it echoes all through the house at night which is really a cool um idea that the the owners just love we'll walk up on the porch so you can see the gardens from above and uh appreciate them in all their glory and uh take a look at this absolutely magical view here from a west bluff cottage now one thing to note is that these tiered gardens here that we're looking down on in the gardens of edge cliff here and in the gardens of the neighboring cottage and many of these west bluff cottages they have these tiered gardens going up the sides of the cottages and what those were for traditionally is kind of bedroom view so the windows on the sides of the cottage that didn't necessarily have a view of the the water would be able to look down at these tiered gardens and have a nice view of some color and be able to appreciate you know those those tiered plantings and so you'll see as you're walking up the west bluff maybe this evening or something you'll see a lot of that at several of these west bluff cottages and that's really what that was all about is planting for the for the bedrooms to be able to look down as we come around here and look out and appreciate this absolutely stunning view of the straits of mackinac it's hard not to point out the just majestic mackinac bridge the bridge being five miles long when it was built was the largest suspension bridge in the world is now the largest in the western hemisphere and really an impressive feat of engineering in fact 75 percent of the bridge is under water tremendous amount of concrete and steel work had to be done dealing with the elements and the weather in the straits of mackinac pumping all that water out as they poured concrete and did all that hundreds and hundreds of feet below sea level it's just an incredible work to uh to imagine being able to put that together every time i drive across it i marvel at that but as you can see here looking out the theme for this year was pink and white for sure uh the owner absolutely loves pink and white and the the just kind of soft nature of that color combination looks really really pretty the mirrored effect of this walkway going down and the mirrored planting going down kind of complements the architecture as you'll see as soon as we get down there and turn back up and look at all this and i see here she's got the best book ever written on gardens unbelievable the gardens of mackinac island that was not planted there i promise you they literally just happen to love that book that yours truly wrote about the gardens of mackina island look at this monarch butterfly here on this meteor shower verbena bonariensis verbena is a butter this is a butterfly magnet plant in the summer time you know on a warm afternoon walking down this walkway there might be a dozen 20 30 butterflies just fluttering around off of these guys and the gardens of the grand feature this plant quite a bit as well malkina island is a great stopping point in one of the main migratory routes for monarch butterflies so we get to enjoy these guys pretty much for the whole entire month of august it's a real treat to be able to walk you guys through these i love being able to take the time to show you some of these stunning gardens hope you all enjoyed this one let's go check out some more macan island gardens [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Jack Barnwell Design

Views: 48,203

Rating: 4.976985 out of 5

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Id: EQElKo_VPlI

Length: 22min 31sec (1351 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020