Take a Tour of P. Allen Smith’s Garden

P. Allen Smith’s gardens are nationally renowned for their beauty and creativity. Recently, Seasonal Wisdom had a chance to return to his wonderful gardens for the 2013 Garden2Blog event, with bloggers from around the nation. Above is the 1904 Colonial Revival-style house, which he featured in his first book Garden Home.

Take a tour of P. Allen Smith’s gardens, and learn how he wants to preserve the best of the heritage skills and foods for future generations.

If P. Allen Smith had his way, more people would know how to grow their own food in the garden. They would also know how to preserve some of that harvest for winter, and they probably would raise their own chickens, preferably the heritage breeds. Click on photos to make larger.

“If you rolled the clock back 15 years,” he says from his Moss Mountain farm home shown above. “And you asked anyone at my family’s dinner table about growing food or raising poultry, they all would have known something. Now, many families don’t even eat dinner together – much less pass down these valuable skills to younger generations.”

Heritage Poultry at P. Allen Smith’s Garden

Preserving these timeless skills is important to this popular book author, television host and lifestyle spokesperson.  P. Allen Smith created his 600-acre Moss Mountain Garden Retreat outside of Little Rock, Arkansas to maintain the “spirit of a 19^th century farm.”  See inside his lovely home.

Above, P. Allen Smith holds two pretty Silkie hens, which look a bit like furry lap dogs.

Everywhere you look, you’ll see P. Allen Smith’s home and farm demonstrate the best practices of gardening, cooking and animal husbandry.

He recently founded the Heritage Poultry Conservancy where he raises seven breeds of chickens, four breeds of geese, two breeds of ducks and two types of turkeys, Blue Slate and Blacks.

Rather than allow these heritage breeds to die out, P. Allen Smith says, “Our goal is preserving genetic diversity in poultry, and to meet the Standard of Perfection for each breed by applying strict breeding practices.”

Jenny Peterson of J. Peterson Garden Design got into the spirit of preserving poultry, by giving this Buff Orpington a big kiss.

Even I got courageous and held a Silkie hen!  I’m happy to report they are as soft as they look. And it’s not often that I get a chance to hold a chicken, much less one that is color-coordinated with my clothes.

Above, White Dorper sheep mingle on a grassy slope, creating a pastoral scene in P. Allen Smith’s garden.

P. Allen Smith’s Gardens

It’s easy to confuse your sense of time when you’re here.  Turn a corner on this estate, and you’ll swear you have stepped back to an earlier century.In the distance lies the majestic Moss Mountain Farmhouse, where the gardens await.

Let’s go take a peek. If you want to see the inside of the historically inspired house, go here.

Right outside the house’s screened porches sits this serene water pond in P. Allen Smith’s garden, surrounded by white roses. In the evening, the white flowers shine brightly in the moonlight, making them ideal for evening events.

In the distance, the Arkansas River awaits.

P. Allen Smith’s gardens were inspired by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and other great gardeners of the late-18^th century and early-19^th century.  You notice that while walking around this property.

In the foreground is P. Allen Smith’s artist studio. Behind the outdoor dining space is an octagonal house for entertaining. Who wouldn’t want to hang out there under the stars on a summer evening?

If you’ve visited Monticello, you can guess that Thomas Jefferson might have enjoyed spending time in the charming octagonal building himself.

American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens ‘Amethyst Falls’) climbs the white columns here and at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion gardens, which P. Allen Smith designed after a devastating tornado.

Ornamental alliums and three decorative trellises make this garden path a delight to discover.

Roses, rather than planted only together, are mixed with other flowers and shrubs for garden interest.

Although P. Allen Smith’s garden suffered unseasonably cold weather a few days before we arrived, everything looked lush and vividly colored.

Even empty, this vintage-style metal container looks charming on a table outside the house.

Further down the trail, two swans were kind enough to pose for me in this garden pond in P. Allen Smith’s garden at Moss Mountain Farm.

While in the distance, White Dorper sheep graze peacefully in the meadow.

P.  Allen Smith’s Rose Garden

When I visited P. Allen Smith’s garden in 2011, this rose garden was only in the planning stages. See here.

Now – with help from notable rose historians and Star Roses and Plants – his newest garden was clearly ready to receive guests.

This garden displays the 200-year history of rose breeding, “from the earliest, once-blooming European varieties to the latest Knock Outs,” reports Monticello’s blog.

P. Allen Smith’s garden shows his life-long infatuation with Noisette roses. According to Monticello, Noisettes are a class of roses that originated in Charleston, South Carolina before 1812.

Noisette roses may have a French name, but they are actually the result of a cross between the fragrant English Musk (Rosa moschata) and the ever-blooming ‘Old Blush’ China Stud Rose (Rosa chinensis cv).

In fact, the first generation of roses – called ‘Champneys Pink Cluster’ – is considered the first hybrid rose in North America.

Sprinkled among these gorgeous historic roses were the delightful Teresa Byington from The Garden Diary and Chris VanCleave from Redneck Rosarian.

By the way, these bloggers co-host the popular #rosechat on Twitter at @Rose_Chat.

Love roses? Then you definitely don’t want to miss this informative Twitter chat about caring and enjoying roses of all types.

The One-Acre Kitchen Garden

As an expert cook and author of Seasonal Recipes from the Garden, P. Allen Smith’s garden is filled with herbs of all types, including flowering chives, lavender and oregano in his one-acre kitchen garden.

You’ll find a wide variety of vegetables from Bonnie Plants in P. Allen Smith’s garden. This includes an ever-changing number of heirlooms to encourage genetic diversity and preserve older open-pollinated food varieties.

The P. Allen Smith garden serves as a laboratory for testing organic gardening methods and trialing new varieties.

Along with vegetables of all types, there are blackberries, raspberries and blueberries from Berry Nurseries as well as several different fruit trees.

These fresh fruit and vegetables provide nearby restaurants with local foods straight from Moss Mountain farm.

“As a nation, we’re eating fewer food varieties than past generations,” says P. Allen Smith. “We’re very aware of the importance of growing different types of vegetables and fruit here at Moss Mountain, even the lesser known types.”

According to P. Allen Smith, his gardens thrive due to excellent soil preparation each spring and fall, as well as Jobe’s Organic Fertilizers with Archaea.

This naturally occurring microorganism helps organic matter break down faster into basic nutrients for the garden, and has even been used in cleaning up oceans after an oil spill. Believe it or not, Archaea microbes can actually eat, process and transform oil chemicals into non-toxic byproducts, according to Oppenheimer Biotechnology. 

The Pond at Garden Home Cottage

During Garden2Blog, the folks at Laguna Ponds actually built and filled a rather large pond in only a few days at the new Garden Home Cottage.  And they even managed to make it look rather easy.

You may remember this Garden Home Cottage from P. Allen Smith’s challenge to build a 1,600 square-foot eco-friendly house in 150 days for $150,000.  Well, now that amazing home has a new garden pond, complete with a small waterfall.

Back at the Original Garden House in Little Rock

Moving away from Moss Mountain Farm and traveling back to the original Garden House in Little Rock, there are more ideas to bring back home from P. Allen Smith’s gardens.

“I like my gardens to be a little seductive,” admits P. Allen Smith. “My designs tend to reveal a little bit at a time to entice you to linger and explore more of the garden.”

For instance, move through those archways above and into his garden and you’ll land at this darling, red and blue shed in the back of the property.

There’s a productive kitchen garden on both sides of the shed, where you’ll find plenty of vegetables and fruits growing in attractive raised beds.

Around the other side of the house, there’s a quiet sitting area on a winding brick path. Plus, fragrant flowers and trees everywhere you look…

This small suburban garden shows that you don’t need much space to create charming garden rooms with plenty of style.

Learn More!

• Visit P. Allen Smith’s website
  
• See inside P. Allen Smith’s home.
• Enjoy more photos of his home and garden.
• Take a tour of gardens P. Allen Smith has designed for others, including the Arkansas Governor Mansion.

Disclosure: The majority of my travel expenses were paid by P. Allen Smith and several well-known gardening companies. My opinions, however, are my own. If you’d like to see the names of other participants and sponsors, go here.