A sneak peek inside five of Philadelphia’s most beautiful private gardens

Philadelphia is a haven for horticulture. It boasts one of the country’s largest gardens and has an array of lively public plots. But some of the most beautiful landscapes in the region belong to private homeowners.

In their new book, Private Gardens of Philadelphia, writer Nicole Juday and photographer Rob Cardillo give readers a peek inside the city’s most alluring (and obscure) private gardens.

In the book, released in March, Juday and Cardillo dig deep into the history of the region’s 18th-century and contemporary properties, detailing how their owners revived their grounds into enthralling gardens. The two-year project, Juday said, was like a “moment suspended in amber.”

“This is such a rapidly changing time between climate change and real estate development, so how things look today could be different today than how it looks down the road,” said Juday, who has served as a rosarian for Wyck House and Garden and later became a program manager at Barnes Arboretum School before taking on several roles at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

PHS is where she met Cardillo, a Pittsburgh native who has photographed gardens for several books, including his own.

For their collaborative book, “I was looking for gardens with personality. We really wanted to make sure that each garden reflected the owner’s or gardener’s vision and personality. It was remarkable to see the variety of different gardening styles,” Cardillo said.

“The best compliment I have gotten about this book was that it made them proud to be in Philadelphia,” Juday said. “If you’re interested in Philadelphia as a place of culture, and you also happen to like nature, gardening, and the beauty of the environment, this book is definitely for you.”

Here’s a short list of the city’s most beautiful private gardens, according to Juday and Cardillo.

Sculptor Syd Carpenter put her creative instincts into the design of her 19th-century Mount Airy home garden’s intricate layout.

Her garden combines her love for mature trees and water with ceramics and sculptures.

Carpenter uses her plants as “artistic media,” playing into the garden’s careful medley of colors, forms, and textures. Her favorite mature trees provide shade and add depth to the landscaping of flower beds and perennials.

There is one key element, Juday notes, that’s missing from Carpenter and her husband Steve Donegan’s garden — lawn grass. Brick, gravel, and stone paths wrap around the garden, and one can even take a seat to view the seasonal blooms or the industrial-style art that complements the garden’s ornamental plants.

Bryn Mawr, as Juday puts it, is full of large, “well-built” structures made for investment bankers, lawyers, stockbrokers, and others of a similar ilk.

As art and antique collectors, Bryn Mawr homeowners Leslie Miller and Richard Worley knew the history of their neighborhood when in 1985, the couple purchased the French country-style property by famed builder Walter K. Durham.

Miller and Worley had little garden space to work with at the start and had little knowledge on how to shape their grounds, but were eager to learn.

They spent days scouring Philadelphia and Delaware Valley antique shops, and applied the same level of “connoisseurship” to their home garden as they do to their art. Each item, whether plant or object, was handpicked to meld with the other works sprawled throughout their grounds.

With the help of horticulture professionals and visits to the Philadelphia Flower Show, the couple installed hardscape, perennial beds, and a pond. They have since expanded their garden and added to their assortment of hostas, hydrangeas, hellebores, Japanese maples, dwarf conifers, and other plants.

In one of the chapters centered in Chestnut Hill, Juday and Cardillo focused on a nearly 50-year-old garden developed by Richard and Alice Farley. The couple put their green thumbs and innovative minds together to build a home and garden filled with lush blooms they have sown over decades.

Once a sliver of real estate, and later a chunk of a country club golf course, the Farleys purchased their home and its surrounding grounds in 1978. It was “unimproved” back then, but it had an endearing history, Juday writes.

After decades of reshaping and tending its grounds, the Farleys now have a hillside garden that is a favorite of their grandchildren. It features a mix of rare trees, shrubs, and some climate change-resistant Asian and native species.

Under the canopy of the garden’s tall trees, seen thriving are shade-tolerant plants such as hydrangeas, rhododendrons, and daphnes. Along with the lush scale of plant life, stone columns and several statues sit throughout the Chestnut Hill plot.

Nature has certainly been nurtured in Coatesville, and the proof is in the pastures. The book took Juday and Cardillo to Brandywine Valley, where the land, tailor-made for past equestrians and land seekers, is filled with centuries of agricultural history, picturesque farmlands, and a beautiful slice of modern horticulture.

They focus on the gardens of Doe Run Farm, a historical pasture known for its landscape and large greenhouses. It was purchased by Sir John Thouron in the 20th century so his wife could ride horses and he could create garden islands throughout the 500-acre estate.

After Thouron died at age 99 in 2007, new owners took up the space in 2010, demolishing the old greenhouses and replacing them with commercial greenhouses. The farmhouse and other elements have been refashioned, but most of the landscape has been retained.

The gardens continue to be tended, with stalks of red hot poker and the blossoms of bush clematis continuing to bloom and grow. The Thouron-era beech trees still stand, while some of the architecture — purposefully left unscrubbed and stained — is fixed to look worn with age.

In the East Falls chapter, Juday recounts the story of Suzanne Penn. The Bay Area native is usually outside her Northwest Philadelphia property by 5:30 a.m., devoting her early mornings to pruning, weeding, and staking her plants.

Upon her move to Philadelphia in the 1980s, Penn learned to veer away from the more exotic plants she saw back home. The relocation exposed her to the region’s bounty of plant species.

“Spring here is truly spectacular,” Penn said. “The whole garden comes to life, and you don’t get that same explosion of nature in California.”

She started 30 years ago when her lush garden was simply a slab of turf. Now it’s full of eight-foot Scheherazade oriental lilies, a Lilliputian grove of Jacquemontii birch trees, and other vibrant plants. She also specifically grows flowers for cutting and arranging with hues of red, purple, and blues adding character to the space.