connecticut stunner

When we built our home, we had the builder dig beds around the entire house, but leave the landscaping to us.  Over the past two years, I've added quite a few bushes, trees and ground cover, which are all filling in so nicely, but every year around this time, I get a little crazy about adding to the landscape (last week, much to the hubby's dismay, I came home with a 14-foot crepe myrtle that weighed every bit of 500 pounds!)  I'm always tearing pages out of magazines for inspiration, but when I stumbled upon this stunning Connecticut garden of landscape designer Glenn Hillman, it literally stopped me in my tracks!

When Hillman moved into his parent's Georgian-meets-Colonial Revival home in Litchfield, Connecticut, he gutted the entire landscape, swapping a swimming pool for a gracious herb garden, adding raised stone beds and borders and building winding brick pathways.  Perennial beds and borders, climbing vines and purple, pink and blue blooms as far as the eye can see create a showstopping, enchanting garden that has got to be the envy of the neighborhood (or zip code!):

Trees and boxwood intermingle with thyme, sage, parsley and rosemary in the herb garden:

Raised stone beds create more spots for mounding and creeping perennials:

Hot pink climbing roses pop against the white trim of the house:

If only I had the patience to grow a perennial bed like this one:

Pear trees lead the way to a garden shed modeled after a pavillion in Colonial Williamsburg, where the designer found inspiration for the entire garden:

A bee skep sits among the most beautiful irises that, according to the designer, smell like bubblegum!  What a treat for the bees!

Kind of depressing, going back to my knockout roses and sweet potato vines, isn't it?  Hope you're having a wonderful week!