The Outsider: English-Style Garden in Cobble Hill Dazzles With Spring Flower Display

May is prime time for gardens, and garden inspiration. The Insider is mixing it up a bit this spring, with a few garden posts to meet the season. – CG

There’s no such thing as an instant garden, and indeed this rectangular Eden behind a mid-19th century townhouse has been two decades in the making. It’s the work of Flo’s Gardens, a long-established partnership between Florence Sheers and Cecilia Kuhn, whose full-service practice includes garden design and maintenance, hardscaping, planters and rooftops.

Flo’s Gardens is well known locally for its bountiful window boxes, their most visible calling card. For some clients, they redo the window boxes four times a year, usually in conjunction with an annual garden maintenance contract.

This mature garden is north facing but still quite bright. “Fortunately there are no trees on the east or west sides, so it gets both morning and afternoon sun, ” making floral abundance possible, Sheers said. An in-ground irrigation system is another key factor in its success.

The garden’s basic layout — three curved planting beds around a central swath of lawn — hasn’t changed much in 20 years. “It’s a very British garden, with mixed borders of perennials and shrubs,” Sheers said. Evergreens, including boxwood, laurel, holly, euonymous and azalea, provide a green backdrop for the floral display and keep the garden from looking bare in winter.

What do change are the flowers. Since this is a perennial garden, and perennials bloom for only a few weeks each year, there’s a constantly shifting parade of color throughout the season. But Sheers advises restraint. “It’s a mistake one can easily make, wanting to have everything, but Brooklyn gardens are rather small. Too many colors together is not so harmonious. Better a clump of three of one kind of perennial than three different species.”

“Think of the garden as another room of your house,” she said. “Think of how it looks from the windows, how it looks in winter, how it might benefit butterflies and birds,” like cardinals, blue jays and red-tailed hawks. “It’s nice to provide a little safety for them in winter, and a birdbath is a delight to watch.”

Flo’s Gardens often coordinates containers of annuals on a front stoop with plantings in the front garden and tree pit, as in this blue and white spring scheme.

A pink-flowering dogwood and climbing roses near the rear clapboard wall make lovely viewing from indoors. The shot of color in the foreground is rose campion, a self-seeding perennial.

Pots of herbs are a must on the back deck, where there’s easy access to them from the kitchen.

The garden is surrounded by a 6-foot-tall horizontal board fence of clear cedar. Climbing roses star in June.

A classic English-style border contains an ever-changing array of perennials and bulbs. (The metal fence has since been replaced; the border remains.)

Below, flowering plants that most certainly grow in Brooklyn, in rough order of bloom from early to mid-spring.

Hellebores, spurge and certain narcissus are early spring bloomers in this part of the world.

Brilliant yellow kerria japonica and a fragrant pink-blooming viburnum brighten the east side of the garden in early spring.

More spring bloomers: frittilaria, narcissus, grape hyacinth; clematis and allium; parrot tulips.

Azaleas and hostas are reliable plants for generally shady Brooklyn gardens with often-acidic soil.

Nighttime lighting gives after-dark dimension to the garden.

[Photos by Flo’s Gardens]

The Insider is Brownstoner’s weekly in-depth look at a noteworthy interior design/renovation project, by design journalist Cara Greenberg. Find it here every Thursday morning.

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