He saw the potential of the land, even if the first task was to rescue it from the invasive multiflora rose, the poison ivy and the honeysuckle. He was drawn to the property because it fit his budget and he liked the fact the house, timeworn as it was, had not been messed about with. The Veg, as they call it, can be seen from all three floors of the house, and it might seem odd to have such a utilitarian garden so front and center, but for Culp and Alderfer, it’s a reminder of the farming legacy of their Pennsylvania Dutch forebears (or, more precisely, German Anabaptists).Ĭulp, now in his mid-60s, grew up in Reading, Pa., moved to Tennessee as a boy and, after working in the South in his 20s, returned to southeastern Pennsylvania and his roots in 1988, working as a perennials buyer for a retail nursery. At the heart of this is a decorative vegetable garden, defined by a white picket fence and surrounded by more herbaceous borders. The main feature is a large open square of land framed by densely planted herbaceous borders and the rose garden. RIGHT: Culp has raised the profile of the snowdrop.

LEFT: After springtime flowering, a native silverbell paves the garden path with petals. The northern half is dominated by a hilly woodland, giving Culp the two distinctive playgrounds for hardy plants, sun and shade. The house and its principal outbuilding, the barn, sit on the southern edge of a property the shape of a lamb chop. The garden doesn’t have a deer fence, and he spends a lot of time spraying a variety of repellents on plants such as tulips, hostas and lilies as they become susceptible to browsing. He may get sidetracked or the heavens may open. This includes preparing a daily list of garden tasks, though Culp admits that when dusk comes and he calls it a day, not everything is done. Spotting weeds and resolving to get to them is a big impulse, though Culp is relaxed about invaders, sees beauty in many weedy plants, and feels that they can aid his vision of a stylized but authentic cottage garden: loose, effusive and romantic.

A garden’s beauty can be strangely remote to passionate gardeners, who are more likely to develop an eye for how plants are growing and changing from day to day, what’s coming into bloom and what’s fading. In the morning, he steps out into the garden with the couple’s two English bulldogs, Dolly and Ted, takes a walk with his coffee and assesses the garden areas. His partner, Michael Alderfer, joined him 28 years ago and together they have worked to bring shape and character to the place, gravitating to their preferred tasks and horticultural interests.Īpart from the canceled events and garden tours, Culp’s daily routine has been fairly normal during the pandemic.

He came to the site when it was a bit of a barren wreck in 1990. “The garden made me.”ĭavid Culp has spent 30 years transforming his two-acre property, Brandywine Cottage, into a garden of delight. But it would all mean nothing without his garden. In late winter, he organizes a weekend festival celebrating the snowdrops that draw snowdrop fanciers from near and far, including England and continental Europe. Being stuck in a horticultural paradise of your own making is like locking Picasso in a studio and telling him he has to paint.Ĭulp loves the camaraderie of the garden world: the symposiums, the dinner parties with plant-nerd friends, the plant sales in public gardens. When you devote years to creating a garden at this level, it becomes the center of your universe.

The enforced isolation has brought home what he knew all along. “It was the absolutely worst time to launch a book,” he says.īut Culp is not crestfallen. Some friends drove by to look at the roadside tulips. Then the coronavirus arrived and the shutdown followed. This year, the parties, book signings and garden tours promised to be a marker, perhaps the marker, of a life’s work. At Brandywine Cottage, spring is a highlight of the garden’s year, a time when as many as two busloads of visitors a week arrive to take in extravagant displays of tulips and savor walks through the burgeoning woodland, the decorative vegetable garden, the herbaceous borders and more than a dozen other major features.

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