Extreme Gardener

Cultivating a Beautiful Dream

Written and Photographed by Carole Ottesen

Deep in the heart of every extreme gardener lives the vision of a garden so powerful that, sooner or later, it must be realized. For Karen Burroughs, that vision sprang from childhood memories.

“I loved flowers so much in childhood. I’ve always loved beautiful things,” she said. A summer house the family owned in Kingston, New York enjoyed a fabulous vista of thousands of acres of meadows that stretched to the foothills of the Catskills. Their neighbor shared the view and enhanced it.

“Our neighbor built a perennial border with a beautiful archway at the beginning and another at the end�leading straight out into those thousands of acres of meadow, ” she recalls. For Burroughs, that garden represented the beautiful dream she would create—someday. In the meantime, there was life.

Rosa ‘Hot Cocoa’

Iris ‘Laugh Lines’

Paeonia ‘Rose Garland’

The Latent Period

After buying a house on 18 acres in Ashton, Md. in 1975, Burroughs had to concentrate on putting the inside of the house in order before she could begin a garden. Outside, her herd of Scottish black face sheep kept her busy.

There were other barriers to Burroughs’ dream of a garden. “Except for the native trees,” she says, “on the whole property, there was nothing here but one boxwood at the front door of the house and one rhododendron under a tree.” There were no garden beds. The soil was, she remembers, “closer to concrete than cement.

“My soil might be fabulous now,” she says. “Now my gardens are so amended, you can work every bed with your hands. But it wasn’t that way when I started.” And there was another, even bigger problem. “I didn’t know the first thing about horticulture,” Burroughs says. “When I first started the gardens, I didn’t know what would grow.”

Fortunately, she found a source of information and inspiration in her friend and neighbor Anne Brooks. A Brookeville floral designer, Brooks maintains a large garden that has furnished the materials for many a wedding. She introduced Burroughs to Washington’s “gardening mafia” who guided and taught her.

La Vie en Rose

At about this time, Burroughs also met her future husband, Gary Hayre, who would eventually build stunning arbors, fences, gates and a stone patio. Toss in gardening friends whose idea of nirvana was a road trip to a nursery, and Burroughs was about to realize her dream.

The first thing she wanted to grow was roses. Seeing the shady, heavily wooded property, her new friends discouraged her. Still, Burroughs persisted, “They were looking up at all the trees. I knew where all the sunny spots were.

“I saw some pictures of roses I loved and went to my neighbor Nick Weber of Heritage Rosarium and showed him what I liked,” she recalls. At the time, she didn’t realize what unbelievable good luck she had in Weber, who specializes in outstanding shrub roses that thrive in the Mid-Atlantic’s steamy climate. Her garden started with 80 roses.

Paeonia ‘Ellen Cowley’

Paeonia ‘Abalone Pearl’

Paeonia ‘Coral Sunset’

“In the first couple of years I went about ordering all of these antique and David Austin roses.” Among these were the dark, grape-colored ‘Cardinal de Richelieu,’ the climbing miniature pink ‘Jeanne la Joie,’ and the pink, wavy-petaled ‘Lilian Austin.’” Over the years, these roses have grown lush. Others have disappeared.

The Peony Phase

With the roses off and growing, Burroughs turned her attention to peonies and tree peonies. Never one to take a tepid approach, she started with 50 tree peonies and 150 herbaceous peonies. The large number of a single type of plant allowed her to compare performances. The superior plants—‘Zephyrus,’ a salmon-yellow with crepe paper petals and aptly named ‘Coral Charm’—remain. Others, deemed unworthy, were put up for adoption.

The Finale

Easy to grow perennials are “my last phase. From the beginning I was always planting and buying whatever I thought was beautiful,” she says. A lesson she learned was to pick and choose only those plants that thrive here.

“I have probably lost a thousand dollars’ worth of Agapanthus [commonly known as Lily of the Nile]. I can make it come back, but I can’t make it bloom,” Burroughs shrugs. Now she concentrates on perennials that perform well in Maryland such as irises and daylilies. And her standards are high.

“I want what is gorgeous and I don’t think an orange daylily is gorgeous. I’ve been collecting really fine yellows—the ones with greenish throats. I have one called ‘Glorious Autumn’; it’s a yellow and orange double that looks like a double daffodil,” she says proudly.

Burroughs, a school bus driver, is living her dream, surrounded by the “beautiful things” she loves and she is grateful. “The thing of it is, I’ve been blessed with wonderful health and energy and a job that allows me to be home to tend my garden during the day,” she says.

Content with the full life she shares with her husband, Burroughs dotes on her 80 roses, 250 peonies, 350 irises and countless perennials, most of which she knows and greets by name. Her household also includes at least 10 dogs, 15 cats, two llamas and a herd of Scottish black face sheep, but that is another story.

Karen Burroughs’ Advice to Gardeners

If people have tons of stuff to give away—it’s invasive, or they wouldn’t be giving it away. You never hear someone say, ‘take this tree peony; I have tons.’
Why buy a flesh-pink daylily when you can buy one that’s clear pink? They’re not rare or expensive. People don’t take the time to find the best colors.
Don’t try Scabiosa [also known as the pincushion flower] in Maryland. It’ll break your heart.