The Eighth Grand Garden

Every year, the first question is the same: where do you begin?

The structure is there, the French-inspired beds, the boxwoods, the walkways. The season will come. What you need is a reason, something to pull the design forward and give it a center.

This year, the reason came from the chrysanthemum, specifically the stylized mon of the Japanese Royal House. Its ordered, petal-like form fits the formal geometry of the garden almost immediately.

The color palette still needed a source. That's where the Ghost Glass Frog came in, not as a subject, but as a teacher. Sachatamia ilex: bright translucent greens, deep purples, the kind of combination that doesn't feel invented. Nature doesn't explain itself. It just offers. You take notes.

That instinct, looking to nature before reaching for a plant list, is something we keep coming back to.

This is our eighth annual display, and Militca designed it again — as she has most of them. She's a horticulturist at Longwood Gardens now, which still catches me off guard sometimes. We work on this together every year, and I've watched her eye get sharper with each one.

The layout is built around four-petal groupings (quads), with four quads completing the full design. Within each, the plants step through in sequence: calibrachoa at the ground, then angelonia, cleome, and salvia at the height. Then it reverses. Salvia back to calibrachoa, repeating across the garden. Rhythm and balance, the chrysanthemum form will stay legible even as each plant fills its petals.

When the garden is fully filled out, that's the part worth waiting for. Full of color and life. No insecticides, no growth regulators. The plants won't be restricted. Pollinators, beneficial insects, and butterflies are all welcome.

The plants this year: Calibrachoa MiniFamous® Neo Violet Ice · Cleome Sparkler 2.0 Purple · Angelonia Serenita® Purple · Salvia leucantha · Ipomoea Sidekick Lime