Douglas Davis

Scientist, Master Gardener, Facilitator and Traveler

The best my memory serves me, the Davis garden got its start around the summer of 1991 with my frustration of seeing a mass of wild blackberries slowly creeping across the Westhampton drive. They literally were blocking nearly half the road. Their excursion into the road-way energized me to remove this mass of vines from the road as well as from an area that is now my front perennial flower bed next to the creek. Once having cleared this large track, I had to decide what to do with it. The decision was made to plant a large patch of red presidential cannas. In subsequent years, I became bored with this limited spectrum of flowers and began to add other flowering plants and at the same time to clear out a substantial stand of privet trees. However, the terrain at this site was so convoluted I decided that it would be necessary to build at least two major walls and back fill them if I were to control the erosion problem.

A few years still later, my wife, Christine, pointed out that there was a very substantial part of our property that always appeared to be under water (now known as the bog garden) that had become quite unsightly, having filled up with downed trees, tons of leaves, and hordes of vines. Her gentle request was- why not clean it out? My agreeing in 1994 to take on this massive clean-up job was most likely the real beginning of my effort to create a large landscaped garden with the bog as one of the center pieces. For as in the beginning of our gardening adventure, once a piece of real-estate is cleared I began to ask what am I going to do with it? In the case of the re-discovered bog, the real issue was how in the world could I ever garden there with the swampy conditions that prevailed. It was at that time that I decided that if I were to do any serious gardening there or on the steep slopes of the rest of my property, I was going to have to develop someway of effectively moving materials from one part of the property to another. The idea that emerged was that of building a series of boardwalks at different elevations all of which would be connected with well defined steps. This took nearly three years; but once these were in place, the location of the many different flower beds evolved quite naturally. At this time (2010) 90% of the flower beds have been identified, and most are well along in their maturity.

The two newest components of the landscape now under development involve the construction of multiple ponds, streams, waterfalls etc.; and the building of a Japanese Tea House inside of a developing moso bamboo ticket, the latter overlooking Jackson Creek. Thus, like many gardens, it is still a work in progress. •