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Melissa
Clark
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Melissa Clark’s garden
in the suburbs of Washington, DC occupies a quarter-acre
lot near Rock Creek Park, in a hilly neighborhood shaded
by mature oaks and beeches. She has been a gardener
only seven years but is making up for lost time by having
become a landscape designer – and doesn’t
miss practicing law a bit.
When she moved into the
house in 1988, there were some straggly hybrid tea roses
on the west side of the property and overgrown yews
and non-blooming azaleas in front of the house. On the
plus side, she had five flowering dogwood trees and
a lot of rich soil thanks to years of decayed oak leaves
from her neighbors’ trees.
Once Melissa started gardening,
her family dubbed her the “mad gardener.”
She yanked out the roses, moved hostas and ferns, took
out a chain link fence, and eventually re-designed the
entire front yard. In the process, she fell in love
with hydrangeas, red-twig dogwoods, shrubby clematis,
and garden photography. She’s found that the mid-Atlantic
area is a great place for gardening, and that there
are enough micro-climates around her house to enable
her to grow some plants that shouldn’t be hardy
in Maryland.
Perennials get moved so
often they sometimes don’t make it. And two years
ago, a 60-foot oak tree in her neighbor’s yard
fell about three feet from her deck, taking out some
fence sections and one of the dogwood trees in the process,
and opening up enough sky that she suddenly had a much
sunnier side yard. (Another opportunity for the shade-loving
perennials to pack their bags yet again . . . .)
And some things come
full circle. Just as we change our gardens, our gardens
change us. Melissa is now experimenting with using hot
colors in her new sunny space, moving away from the
pastels that dominate her shade garden. And although
they aren’t hybrid teas, two roses now grace her
garden, connecting her to the past and giving her more
challenges for the future, as she learns how to grow
them.
More information:
Read another story
about Melissa's garden:
Contact Melissa by email:
madgardenr@comcast.net
Read about Melissa's
English garden tour in the Washington Post
and visit Melissa's
online garden
Send us your Story:
YourStory@AmericanGardenMuseum.com
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