January 13, 2024
Chanticleer’s Ruin Garden has a fairy tale quality. It is not a real ruin, but it was built in 1999 on the site of one of the original houses on the estate. Plants climb crumbling walls and emerge from cracked paving, ghostly faces appear in pools of water, and the dining room features a sarcophagus-like table. That gives me Spirited Away vibrations.
This is part 8 of my visit to Chanticleer during the Philadelphia Area Fling last September.
Let’s start with the library, which is entered through a wide door from the Pebble Garden.
Near the fireplace, agaves adorn the stone wall like green gumbonnieres on a lapel.
Stone books, including one stamped with an acorn, lie open to the elements, waiting to be read.
Moss, one is titled. A leafy face stares at you.
Masonryreads the second.
From books — I wonder from whose library?
Leaves of books, leaves of plants, what we leave behind… everything gets mixed up.
A bucket elevator chain planted with small succulents hangs from a wooden post. In the corner, a weeping spruce seems to creep into the room like a green ghost.
The chain makes a charming planter.
Waterfall plants in small buckets
Nice Citron passionflower
Hydrangea in bloom
And now we come to those marble faces in the water.
They don’t look spooky to me. Pretty calm, floating there.
The next room is the dining room, with a long black table – actually a reflecting pool – reminiscent of a polished coffin.
Paving with a question mark?
Tillandsias on the mantle
Loree of Danger Garden recently wrote that she actively dislikes the big black table. I feel more ambivalent about that. It adds a more spooky element to the ruins, which I appreciate.
I would like water plants to grow in it.
The open doors and windows of the ruins frame glimpses of the gravel garden beyond.
A cluster of stone acorns under oak saplings.
Outside the walls, the garden is completely taken over again.
A few more ghostly weeping Norway spruces slide through the mini-meadow of prairie seed.
And a disembodied face is dozing in the grass.
Next: Exploring Bell’s Woodland and along Bell’s Run Creek. For a review of Chanticleer’s Meadow Gravel Garden, click here:
To read about my past visits to Chanticleer’s Ruin Garden, follow these links:
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