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not big, it was anything that I could handle,” she explains.
In its 13-year history, however, there have been several big deliveries:
two live oaks, a Chinese elm, an array of palm trees, a semi
filled with boulders and two tractor trailers full of mulch.
Every year the Roots treat the clay with compost — everything
from the garden — woodchips to grass clippings — goes back into
the soil. “Until I started putting compost on it, I couldn’t even get
a shovel in,” Karen says. “Now it’s much, much better.”
At the onset of the design process, Karen addressed her garden’s
problems first. She found two—one was water drainage, the other
was the view line. “I don’t like to see the entire garden. I like to
kind of experience going around the corner, so there’s always something
that’s a little surprise. By putting the Savannah hollies there,
then I provide, one: a beautiful seating area to look at the garden
and, two: I am also blocking the view line. I like to see through it
to kind of tempt you.”
She added French drains around the periphery, one that empties
into a dead corner of the lake. When she began it was shallow, full
of mosquitoes and gnats. Opposite the spillway, the prevailing winds
blew the debris toward her purview. “It was nasty. So I thought, well
I can solve two issues. If I drop a pump in down there, bring it up
the hill ... I can turn the water off and on. It’s a dry stream bed when
I need it for drainage, I just turn the water off; and it made this corner
of the lake live, which is beneficial to everybody because it cut
out all the issues you have with stagnant water.”
Karen Root, who graduated from Longwood Gardens, is a
landscape designer. Before moving to North Carolina, she and her
family spent 18 years in the greater Philadelphia area where she
started a business to feed her habit. “I’m a plantaholic,” she admits.
“I don’t need clothes, I don’t need jewelry ... but don’t let me pass
an arboretum.”
Karen says she loves the variety of living things. “What I had
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