Gardening for Life

Whether by passion or profession, garden guru Peg Bier plants paradise.

By Marion Butterworth

Photographer Lou Mazzatenta

Wander into Peg Bier’s garden and you’ll think you’ve stumbled across a verdant botanical wonderland. Her three-acre suburban marvel comes alive as dappled light penetrates the leaves of venerable oaks and tulip poplars to dance across a fertile cornucopia of hostas and hydrangeas, liriope and lilies, pots and paths.

Alchemy of this magnitudeósave in the movies and the Boston or Chelsea flower showsódoesn’t happen overnight.

“A garden is never finished,” says Bier, an expert on that score, having worked on hers for the last 47 years. When she and her husband Dick moved into their Vienna Cape Cod, the first of their four children was a month old, and the landscape was merely some scrubby patches of grass scattered among native trees rooted in rocky soil.

A busy new mom, Bier began gardening out front, using plants and shrubs to create a transition from road to house. She started small, as time and money allowed, nurturing plants along with children. “The garden and the family evolved together,” she says.

In the early years, the back was used for swing sets, and the big oaks were bases for games of hide and seek. Eventually, a deck was built, and later a patio. There were always family walks through the woods, with the kids capturing butterflies by day and lightning bugs by night.

“The garden has become quite experimental over the years. It’s what I do instead of growing grass,” Bier says. This farmer’s daughter was born to garden, and as a young mother she was able to transplant her passion into her profession.

Just as she was beginning to develop her garden, Bier became friends with a neighboring family who started a garden center 35 years ago in Merrifield. She joined them in the business, and as it grew, so too did Bier’s knowledge and talent.

Now, 30 years later, she is a manager, plant specialist and buyer at Merrifield Garden Center’s Fair Oaks location, where she gives frequent lectures on garden design, plants and gardening practices. She’s also somewhat of a local celebrity, with a show on News Channel 8 at 8 a.m. every Saturday morning.

Paths Beckon

Back when Maple Avenue was two lanes, Vienna a sleepy little town, and Tysons Corner nothing more than a developer’s dream, the Bier’s three acres was an average-size parcel upon which to site a modest country home.

Now, with huge new houses on quarter-acre lots dotting this suburb, Bier’s grandly scaled, otherworldly enclave, which sits slightly lower than its neighbors, feels removed and protected. Its spaciousness affords the luxury of sinuous paths that connect a series of garden “islands.”

“The garden paths were put in first because they came about naturally,” Bier explains. They follow the natural topography of the lot, meandering through woodland and sunny meadow.

For the paths, Bier favors Seminole chips, a red, irregular gravel, but says that she uses different paving materials to ease transitions from one style of garden to another throughout her site.

She chose formal brick for street-side walkways, which gives way to slate around the house and patio. Paths in the gardens behind the house range from Seminole chips to grass to mulch to broken slate to glass stepping stones, some edged in brick laid flat to ease maintenance.

“I wanted the interest and variation that comes from using different forms and shapes,” she explains. She dislikes pea gravel for paths because wheelbarrows and feet tend to bog down in it.

To use such a variety of materials successfully, one must not see them all at once, Bier says. Repetition is important too. These two tenets also hold true in designing garden beds and in siting plants and accessories such as statuary and structures.

Because Bier’s garden follows the lot’s rolling landscape, it reveals itself only as you traverse it. Each path crooks like a finger motioning, “Come here,” the glimpse of what lies beyond tempting in its promise.

Islands in Sun and Shade

“I created large island plantings that flow into each other,” Bier says, enabling her to make the most of microclimates and experiment with different garden styles. Foremost in her tree-sheltered landscape are woodland gardens populated with shade-loving perennial stalwarts such as ferns, hostas, hellebores and Pulmonaria (lungwort), and punctuated by annual impatiens for seasonal show.

Plants with leaf colors other than green add interest to the shadowy spots. She’s added sitting areas to several islands, which she says, “present the feeling of tranquility” and invite repose in the midst of the garden.

Bier takes advantage of her limited areas with full sun exposure by placing sun-loving plants in pots that she can reposition as necessary. This movable legion of containers allows her to put color where it’s needed.

In various spots with day-long sun, Bier has carved out a distinct cutting garden, a butterfly and herb garden, a vegetable garden, and a conifer garden. “The right plant for the right place applies to all types of gardening,” she says.

Would-be gardeners should first analyze the topography of the site, the spot’s exposure, the prevailing winds, and the prevalence and type of insects, she advises. Vitally important to successful growing is knowledge of the soil’s porosity, ability to drain, and composition. Once you know the limitations and assets of your land, Bier says, “diverse plant forms and textures, with enough repetition, will give a garden flow.”

Artful Accessorizing

Bier’s love of garden accessories nearly equals her love of plants. She displays a range of items, from whimsical Forest Faces and copper butterflies to stately obelisks and statuary, always using these extras to please the eye and enhance the plantings.

She enjoys how a family of cement bunnies half-hidden in the vegetable garden surprises visitors. While a metal blue heron aptly and elegantly adorns a pond garden, tiny verdigris frogs peek out beneath a water lily’s glaucous, cupped leaves.

“The main thing [about garden ornaments] is to make sure they look at home” among the plants and are in keeping with the garden’s style, Bier says. “Arbors, trellises and gates not only provide canopy or division of space, but also beckon us to seek what is beyond.”

Sections of black iron fence and a gate create a segue between different gardens, and a grouping of vertical planting forms among sprawling plants, offsetting the botanical wildness with contrasting structure and shape.

For this grandmother of 14, mother of four, and gardening guru, her favorite activity continues to be wandering along her garden paths, snapping off a dead leaf here, plucking a flower there, and making mental notes to prune this and mulch that, all the while reveling in her natural wonderland.