Isabelle Bowen Henderson was a talented Raleigh artist whose perennial border was once described as “the most avant-garde in North Carolina” on a 1938 garden tour.
What made her border such a standout? Color. Isabelle approached garden design as an extension of her artistic talents and orchestrated her front garden to create painterly compositions. She believed that planting a flower-border, with a good scheme for color, was no easy task.
Here are a few tips from a local legendary gardener:
Focus on one season per section to maximize the color in the perennial border.
Begin with a stunning focal plant. Isabelle’s garden featured bluebells in early spring followed by Iris and Lilies for summer. She selected flowering perennials and foliage plants to complement the color and added annuals to complete her painterly goals.
Use a painter’s color system. Isabelle taught how to create special effects with color, bringing color charts to illustrate her techniques. For example, use cool colors along the background to create the illusion of distance, making a sense of spaciousness. Then further enhance the effect by planting bright yellows along the foreground to draw the eye forward.
Blend colors in harmonious ratios to achieve a pleasing balance. Bright colors need to be balanced with dark colors nearby in a 3:1 ratio of dark to bright to avoid a jarring visual tension.
Embrace plants native to our Piedmont climate. Isabelle incorporaed hardy perennials, shrubs, and native plants that thrive in our region’s heat and humidity.
Include flowering trees and shrubs to address the vertical dimension and draw the eye upward, making a small garden feel more spacious. Plus providing wonderful color in season.
Isabelle Bowen Henderson Garden
Isabelle’s garden was a source of inspiration for the Raleigh community. She frequently opened it to visitors and used it to advocate for garden design as an art form. Her stunning borders brought her recognition across North Carolina and her garden was regularly included on state and local garden tours. Elizabeth Lawrence, who grew up in the neighborhood with Isabelle, referenced her garden and use of color five times in her seminal work A Southern Garden.
Isabelle is said to have spent as much as five hours a day gardening, and would fall asleep at night reading seed catalogs. Even so, she couldn’t have done it alone—her longtime gardening partner, Otis Harris, worked alongside her for years.
Today, decades later, her perennial border is still a beautiful feature of the marvelous home and garden estate. Over time, it has naturalized into more of a shaded garden. Now designated as a Raleigh Historic Landmark, the home and garden on Oberlin Road is open to the public on select dates..
—
Erica Winston is a Raleigh Garden Club member, NGC Landscape Design Consultant, and shade gardener. Her own garden is an NGC and NWF certified backyard habitat.
