An Ohio Landscape Designer Transformed His Yard into an English Garden with a Midwest Twist
Raised on an Ohio strawberry farm, landscape designer Nick McCullough feels at home in the country. "I like gardens to feel really natural," he says. "But what people don't realize is what makes them feel loose and welcoming is actually good structure and organization."
That philosophy is on display at the 2015 farmhouse Nick built outside Columbus with his wife and business partner, Allison. He carved the spaces closest to the house into rectangles, including a crisp lawn and gravel terrace.
Related: 20 Secrets to Landscape Success
Nick is a master of garden rooms—defined zones within a landscape design. To keep lawns from becoming"green blobs," he says, clearly delineate their shape (in this case, a rectangle) and edge them in perennials or hedges.
Carefully pruned hornbeam trees, a massive evergreen hedgerow of Spring Grove arborvitae and orbs of boxwood form structured backdrops for perennial borders. The design has the bones of a formal English garden, but Nick sowed Midwest in the details.
Native grasses and prairie plants lure pollinators. Rusted wagon wheels roll through flowers. And antler-shape staghorn ferns hang along the garage. "It's comic relief," Nick says. "A wall of living trophies instead of stuffed ones."
Though elegant, the yard at heart is a family space, one where the couple's children, James and Charlotte, run barefoot as they chase butterflies and look for toads.
"There are not many rules in our garden," Nick says. "The only thing the kids aren't allowed to do is hang from the hornbeams."
Everywhere we look in our garden, there is a memory of a trip, an outing or a friend we've met along the way.
Nick and Allison's garden is one of 20 featured in a new book they co-authored with Midwest Living contributing garden editor Teresa Woodard. Out in October, American Roots draws lessons from landscape designers' home gardens. Available now for preorder (American Roots, Timber Press, $40).