Cottage Garden

For Blanche and Charles Hearn, the decision to purchase their 1940s-era cottage in North Little Rock was based as much on the yard as it was on the house. “We liked the style of the home, but the back yard was especially appealing,” says Blanche. “It had two levels and some stone retaining walls, and I could immediately see possibilities for what I could do with it.”

Blanche, an avid gardener, envisioned a multi-leveled cottage garden that would wrap around the side and back of the house and terrace down the hillside. After working out a design, she and Charles, owners of North Little Rock's Hearn Furniture, began the transformation. They repaired the existing stone steps and walls, and built additional ones to define paths and planting beds. Installing a stone patio eased the transition between the house and garden, and adding a pergola made of cypress created a focal point and shaded the walkway between upper and lower levels.

Within the garden beds, Blanche's goal was to “design a green base and then use flowers as inserts,” she says. To do so, she used the existing azalea and abelia bushes, and supplemented them with boxwoods and other evergreens. For color, she brought in perennials—cannas, phlox, rudbeckia and more—that would thrive in the yard's mix of shade and sun. Throughout the process, friends and fellow gardeners shared some of their favorite plants, giving Blanche daisies, hostas and hydrangeas to work into the beds.

As a means of blending the stone façade of their cottage with the garden, Blanche and Charles planted Boston ivy and coaxed it to grow up the walls. Within a few years, it covered the back and side of the house with a lush layer of green. “The house and the garden seem to fit each other now,” says Blanche.  “We're enjoying the end result, and we enjoyed what it took to get here.”

Design Resources
Pergola carpenter: Jerry Nott, Little Rock
Custom-milled cypress: Robert and Chad Word, Thornton