Renovating a perennial: the renowned perennial border at the JC Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University was recently given a complete facelift--and offers lessons for our own gardens

摘要

How do you overhaul a 300-foot-long and 18-foot-wide English-style perennial border overflowing with nearly 1,000 different plants in order to make room for an entirely new border the next season? That's not a problem most of us have to contend within our gardens, but that was the daunting task facing the staff and volunteers at the JC Raulston Arboretum (JCRA) in Raleigh, North Carolina, several years ago when its enormous and renowned perennial border was slated for renovation. The perennial border is one of several display gardens at the eight-acre arboretum created in 1976 by horticulturist J.C. Raulston. Originally known as the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Arboretum, it was renamed in 1997 in honor of Raulston, who died in an automobile accident in 1996. Planted with mixed perennials in the spirit of Gertrude Jekyll's long border at Munstead Wood in Surrey, England, the border has been lauded by noted English landscape architect Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, who toured the arboretum in 1989, as "an epic in world horticulture...a heroic border... it is beyond Jekyll."