Story by Lindsay Bond Totten
Photography by John Totten

Gardens are first and foremost about plants: the soil needed to nurture them, a gardener's eye to place them correctly and a knowledgeable hand to feed and prune. On the opposite end of the horticultural spectrum lies the aesthetic of gardening: as important as the science, certainly, but somewhat more interpretive.

Most gardeners ply their craft through mastery of the visual arts. Architecture and planting beds provide the canvas on which gardeners paint pictures in foliage and flowers. Buildings, walls and arbors double as frames. We invite guests into our three-dimensional scenes by adding walkways, paths, seating areas and steps.

But it's the gifted grower, indeed, who recognizes that a garden can embrace the performing arts as well, elevating the experience-and the space-to that of a production.

Nowhere is this passion for drama more evident than in these three exquisite urban hideaways. In each setting, the entrance serves as the gardener's "curtain"-a gate, a door, an archway. The anticipation for what lies beyond is as powerful as that anxious moment just before the theater curtain rises. Lights, camera...

Entry Into My Backyard Paradise
From darkness into the light at the far end, there's something truly compelling about a tunnel. Even if the end isn't so very far.

Architects Ingham and Boyd understood the mystique of the tunnel-they were Pittsburghers, after all-and perfectly captured the effect in their design of this historically significant Shadyside home. Not only does the archway graciously connect house to garage, it also serves as the ceremonial approach to the backyard. The architects could only hope for a garden-and gardener-worthy of the grand entrance they had envisioned.

How could they possibly have known?

"I think of it as an entry into my backyard paradise," says the current owner. She accepts full responsibility for the excellent "bones" she inherited and has spent the last 20 years making sure the legacy of this fine Pittsburgh garden continues.

She and the gardeners here before her were the beneficiaries of the creative genius of landscape architects William Pitken Jr. and Seward H. Mott of Cleveland. Formal walkways, perennial borders and a generous grass panel provide the canvas; statues and a central fountain provide the ornamentation. But the garden laughs in flowers. And everywhere, roses.

"The play of light and shadows, even in winter-especially in winter-is what makes the entrance so special," this gardener believes. "But the real surprise is the size of the garden when you emerge from the tunnel-it's very large for a city property, almost an acre."

This special garden could not have been entrusted to more capable or more appreciative hands.

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