Meet Madame Bernadine Richard

You might imagine that an eight-acre site on the Heards Ferry Road, including an historic home dating to the 1920’s would not suffer from neglect. But Bernadine Richard says that when she and her husband Jean-Paul first walked the garden in pleasurable anticipation of finding their many new horticultural treasures “you could not leave the paths. Out first challenge was to clear out much of the creeper, ground covers and bushes that had run amok!”

After a hectic period of clearing this rampant material, rescuing plants, bushes and trees and installing some of their favorite, featured species the Richards now equitably divide the labor of maintaining their Eden, where Bernadine has responsibility for planning new features, and deadheading their plantings in the existing works, and Jean-Paul handles the new installations.

“I had the opportunity to study landscaping more formally”, she said, “but I wanted to retain the spontaneity of our plans, and their natural evolution in the space available.”

These are people who take their ‘yard’ very seriously. I counted over a dozen water features, ten tableaux and more than forty individual pieces of sculpture, nestled in their own settings.

But winding through the garden is not a bit like racing through a Disney Park. Mme. Richard pointed out that only two areas have had any substantial artificial grading, and it is that very natural feeling that stays with the visitor. The features range from streams that pool as they fall down the side of the hill on which the house is set to larger, more formal, ponds framed with stone walls.

The plantings are plentiful and with the benefit of the long Southern growing season are now quite mature. This reinforces the feeling of permanence that surrounds the whole. It is hard to imagine that so much work has been accomplished in such a short period of time, and in the main, by just three people!

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