Shore thing: Taking time to do it right in the garden

The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT) - Living in the Gardens has its privileges.

This section of Ocean City, N.J., down below the numbered streets and relatively insulated from the summer crowds, is known for its single homes and mostly year-round residents. This is where Curtis Roth and his partner, personal-injury lawyer Marvin Lundy, have shared an elegant vacation home known as "Gate Cottage" for two decades.

Today, there's a slight breeze off the beach, which is but one house away. The scents of old-time pink and white roses waft light and sweet in the heat, while goose-shaped fountains rush soothing streams of water into the pool.

We're feeling terribly entitled.

Suddenly, Roth has to shout over the whine of a weed whacker, followed minutes later by a ridiculously loud riding lawn mower. The landscaping crew next door has apparently decided summer's no fun without gasoline.

There's no avoiding the whacking multitudes, even in the Gardens. But here, too, a garden _ with a small" g _ aids our escape, if only till the crew's return next week.

Roth, who's 54 and grew up in Rydal, Pa., is the gardener in this couple. He escapes to the Gardens as often as he can. He has the time for it these days, having taken a break from his own legal career handling custody cases.

But his training is ever present. He seems to approach the garden as he might the law.

He does his homework. He studies plant catalogs, gardening Web sites, and books. He sets up a spreadsheet to record a plant's color, height and bloom time.

In the end, whether deciding what to buy at the nursery or how to use something in the garden, Roth tosses out the rules and conventions of horticulture and design and goes with his instincts.

And _ do they teach this stuff in law school? _ he's unapologetically self-satisfied with the results.

"It's a matter of having a natural ability to do this," Roth says, gesturing around his garden.

Before it reached its current satisfactory state, however, the same garden _ and here's all we'll say on this subject _ was designed and redesigned by professionals more than once. Each fell short of Roth's expectations.

"Finally," he says, "I decided to do it myself. The best way for me to learn about something is to just do it."

So here we are. And it's sounding cosmic.

"The garden, for me, is a microcosm of how the world works," Roth says. "You do the best you can and try to prepare for cataclysmic events. The rest of the time, when things are good, you enjoy it."

Supporting FREE Catholic Education with Grass-fed Beef

For now, disaster's at bay. Things are good. And Roth, clearly, is enjoying it.

A wide assortment of flowers, including 75 rosebushes, bloom all around Gate Cottage, which was built in 1938 as a traditional Colonial and now looks more like an English cottage, Shore variety.

Roth and Lundy, whose primary residence is in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square, have more than doubled the square footage of their second home, from 1,700 to 3,500. They've added white vinyl siding and plastic picket fencing, black shutters, and a cupola with clock.

The 80-by-100-foot lot, once mostly lawn, now features a series of small gardens, each a vignette in the larger work. One favorite, out front, is a romantic mountain of pink shrub roses with pink impatiens dotted about.

Roth once hated the ubiquitous impatiens, but no more. "I've grown respectful of the humble impatiens. I realize its worth on this Earth," he says, citing all-summer color, profuse blooms, and its undemanding nature.

In the herb and cutting garden on the way to the pool, Roth has planted eight kinds of mint, four sages, thyme and rosemary interspersed with dramatic bloomers like dahlias in coral, red and yellow. The flowers help fill the 300 vases of every size he uses to create arrangements for the house.

"This bed is different every year. It'll be different next week," Roth says. "That's what I love about a garden."

Once inside the pool area, the mood changes. Where the plantings before were sprightly and color-splashed, now they're soothing and pale. This is the garden's centerpiece, a place for rest, reflection and socializing, as 70 family members from around the country did at a party here last month.

"Here's where we sit. I wanted it to be relaxing," says Roth, who finds it so relaxing, he rarely ventures across the street to the beach.

The pool is painted a mustard color (Roth hates blue pools) that turns foamy green and pondlike in the sky's reflection. This sets off the hydrangeas, which run from white to pink to blue, and the white accents all around them.

"It's an oasis of white," Roth says.

White geraniums. White petunias. Soon-white sweet autumn clematis. White gardenias. Silvery bamboolike ornamental grasses. They fill the beds and containers, and two enormous white trellises framing the pool.

Presiding over it all is a large white pergola layered with thousands of white Meidiland roses that drape like ruffled taffeta. These 2-inch-wide double blooms are soft white, mildly fragrant, and hypnotic to the senses.

Make this Christmas Extra Special with the Gift of Faith

Especially at night. For this was designed as a moon garden, a place that comes fully alive at twilight. Its airy flowers and foliage reflect not just the evening light, but the simplicity and ease, the beauty and mystery, of living at the beach.

"Nothing is more peaceful," Roth says.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

___

SHORE GARDENS

Shore gardeners love hydrangea, a timeless classic that tolerates sandy soil, strong winds and salt spray. And Alison Lopata, of Lang's Garden Market in Linwood, sells a ton. She likes 'Endless Summer' mopheads, which bloom till frost. Ocean City gardener Curtis Roth's 'Blushing Bride' and 'Penny Mac' do great, too.

But shrubs like the 'Thunderhead' dwarf Japanese black pine, Hinoki or false cypress, Hollywood juniper, and "sand cherry" (Cistena plum) are beachworthy, as well. So are perennials such as 'Stella de Oro' daylily, black-eyed Susan ("Rudbeckia), purple and yellow ice plant ("Delosperma), blanketflower ("Gaillardia), and Flower Carpet groundcover roses.

Whatever you plant, Lopata says, do one thing: Add compost and topsoil every couple of years.

"I don't know whether the soil is dropping down or going out into the ocean to make a new island chain off the coast of Bermuda," she jokes. "But you have to replenish the soil regularly."

Garden designer Michael Bowell, who services high-end Shore clients and did some work for Roth, likes to create beautiful containers for the beach. You can control the plants' environment, with an added benefit: All but the lowest containers frustrate that scourge of Shore gardeners, bunnies.

Roses are good bets here, too. "Roses that get blackspot and other issues up in the Philadelphia area do magnificently at the Shore," Bowell says. "They don't get disease because of all the fresh air, and the same wind that's a pain in the butt in the city is great for roses at the Shore."

He especially likes two new yellow roses: the fragrant 'Sunny Knock Out' and climbing Carefree Sunshine. "You go down the Shore to go to the Shore, not to labor in your garden, and these roses are just so easy," Bowell says.

Easy is important. Roth used to spend several hours a week deadheading, but now he seeks out plants like self-cleaning petunias. "It's just too much work otherwise," he says.

His other advice:

Drive around your Shore community before buying new plants. "If you don't see it growing, it probably doesn't do well here," Roth says. Japanese maple, for example, is a lovely tree, but "those trees burn up here." Try crape myrtle instead.

Enjoy Daily Readings? Pay it Forward

Buy bigger, despite the cost. Shore conditions can be tough on plants.

And once everything gets going, Roth says, "Don't cut things coming through the fence."

Now there's a pleasant philosophy. Let it guide your gardening, and your summer, at the Shore.

___

© 2008, The Philadelphia Inquirer.