A Year at North Hill

by Joe Eck

Landscape designers Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd offer a month-by-month chronicle of their Vermont garden. Living in a difficult climate, they manage to grow a vast range of plants, many of which are not usually hardy in their cold conditions. With about five acres under cultivation, North Hill contains something of everything, from roses to vegetables to conifers. As the authors describe the joys and demands of a life lived close to the soil, a portrait emerges of both a beloved landscape and a focused, rhythmic existence reminiscent of a bygone age. Their account begins with the mud of April when the earth starts to thaw and proceeds to the glory of a summer filled with roses and a final burst of colour in September, followed by New England's fiery October and the gray days when the plants under glass provide a respite from the cold November and December days.