Tour The Formal Garden Rooms

Welcome to the post “Tour The Formal Garden Rooms” at Mezzacello. The formal gardens are the East edge of the property (see map) and include three manicured rooms which are from North to South, The Peony Court, The Fountain Square, and The Friendship Garden. These rooms provide more than just beauty though.

Garden Features

A few of the features of these garden rooms:

1. Provide structured space for strolling and enjoying the gardens
2. Include an extensive network of buried swales and hugelkultur permaculture beds
3. Enclosed by 60 boxwood hedges to provide structure and microclimates
4. Require no watering, as their beds mimic the forest floor
5. 90% of the plant life here is from cuttings and almost all are perennials
6. 50 different types of flowers, bushes, trees, and ground cover in these gardens
7. They are built over the remaining foundations of two houses that existed here prior
8. Their flowers are all hardy and can withstand Ohio’s winters and summers.
9. The garden was inspired by Rick Riley’s ancestors from Virginia and their tradition of founding gardens and transplanting boxwoods
10. All the boxwoods were donated and transplanted here
11. Some of the flowers remain from the previous owner and have been integrated into the gardens
12. All the flowers in the Friendship Gardens were donated as cuttings from friends and neighbors
13. The fountain in The Fountain Square is intentionally placed to attract life to the gardens and is planted with water lettuce to allow pollinators to land safely and drink, and the water lettuce helps control algal growth
14. The formal gardens are a significant source of biomass for the composts and bioreactor at Mezzacello Urban Farm
15. Rick’s passion is cut flower arrangements so the formal garden rooms provide a source of material for his passion
16. The tree in The Friendship Garden is a London Plane (in the Sycamore Family) and was planted in 1986 next to an existing house
17. The bark of the sycamore tree is valuable source of biomass that supports 20 different species of beneficial insects and pollinators as well as bird nest material and Nitrogen, magnesium, and carbon for the hugelkultur beds
18. It looks pretty, but it actually a highly functional series of nested ecosystems that play a vital role in the seven other ecosystems at Mezzacello