metro
Secret Garden
Take a peek behind the scenes at a horticultural
haven featured in this month's Franklin Garden Walk.
A meandering path winds through masses of hostas,
ferns, hydrangeas and more.
This rare, magnificent tree peony in Marc Whitefield's garden blooms for five blissful days each year.
Lynne Konstantin
Contributing Writer
I
f gorgeous gardens make you green with envy (and
flush with joy and inspiration), take part in the
28th-annual Franklin Garden Walk, sponsored by
the Franklin Branch of the Women's National Farm &
Garden Association, where visitors are offered the chance
at behind-the-scenes tours of seven of the Franklin area's
horticultural masterpieces. Here, we highlight one of the
tour's treasures:
"I think that my passion for gardening is genetic:'
says Marc Whitefield. His great-grandfather, who came
to Pennsylvania from Lithuania (where he eventually
returned, finding this country was not religious enough
for the observant Jew), was a farmer, and his grandfather,
Morris Whitefield, was in the produce business in Detroit.
"I've had a lifelong fascination with understanding how
things grow, watching small twigs evolve into tall trees,
and mixing pollen from one plant with the stigma of
another and finding the possibilities of offspring that can
develop:'
His fascination has developed into a spectacularly
vibrant garden on the acre of grounds of the Bloomfield
Township home he shares with his wife, Ellen. His lot
is surrounded by what was formerly known as Franklin
Lake, where the area's early settlers built a grist mill in the
1840s (which is now the Franklin Cider Mill). In 1940, the
lake was drained, but it remained a wetland.
"My property is landlocked by 26 acres of untouched
land, which is also bordered by the Franklin branch of the
Rouge River:' Whitefield says. "The area is pretty wild,
with herds of deer, coyotes and fox:' which he tries to
keep at bay with an 8-foot fence.
Developing his garden since the family moved into the
home in 1989, Whitefield, a labor attorney and execu-
tive board president of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield,
24 June 6 • 2013
expanded it three years ago, leasing some of his neighbor's
property.
The hilly landscape is lush with more than 600 varieties
of hostas, fluttering in hues of green, muted teal, cream
and gold, with each labeled and many hybridized by
Whitefield himself. "I cross-pollinate them, grow them
out of seeds, transplant them in the summertime and in
four to five years, you see what you have he says. "Each
year, I may get half a dozen plants out of thousands:'
When he is successful, he is prone to naming them after
family members, including his grandsons.
"I have a Giant Jonah and a Mighty Max," says
Whitefield. "They are unique plants — nobody else has
them and you can't buy them:'
Grandson Jonah Sterling, 31/2, will take springtime visi-
tors by the hand and tell them that his is the finest hosta
in the entire garden. (Max, 15 months, "doesn't quite
appreciate his hosta yet:')
The garden is punctuated by more than 60 varieties of
Japanese maples, which form a massive, almost protective
umbrella over the eclectic collection of perfectly formed
peonies that pop with painterly color, plus ferns, hydran-
geas and the prized hostas, for which he has a technique
for nurturing into their full glory.
"I gather all the leaves from my backyard, and my
neighbors' backyards, until I have several hundred bags
of leaves:' Whitefield says. "My landscaper brings in his
power mowers and pulverizes them. The weekend before
Thanksgiving, I cover the entire garden with the leaves
and by the next season, the worms have taken most of the
leaves down into the earth. I've been doing this for years,
and it's built up the soil enormously, kept weeds down to
nothing. The garden is all perennials, so in the beginning
of spring, it's totally barren. But in about 30 days, the
entire carpet erupts into a riotous garden. The hostas love
it. And this year, with our late and wet spring, the garden
really is tremendous:'
❑
Enormous and verdant, Whitefield's hostas blanket the
path behind his home.
"I just became interested in Japanese maples a few
years ago," Whitefield says. The leaves on this Mikawa
Yatsubusa dwarf Japanese maple overlap each other
like shingles on a roof.
Visit Marc Whitefield's garden, and six more
equally unique and inspirational green retreats,
during the 28th-annual Franklin Garden Walk ($12
advance/ $14 at the door), 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and 6-9
p.m. Wednesday, June 12. In addition to the tours,
the Walk offers a salad luncheon buffet ($10) and
Artisan Market of handcrafted Michigan-made
items. Proceeds benefit local and national horti-
cultural, educational and environmental causes,
including Gleaners Food Bank, Greening of Detroit,
Belle Isle Botanical Society, horticultural scholar-
ships to Michigan State University and more. For
more information, call (248) 851-1066, or visit
franklingardenclub.org .