The Gardens

There is a tension at the heart of any garden on Cape Cod’s outer reaches — between the impulse to shape things and a landscape that has its own ideas. The soil is sandy and lean, the wind persistent, the salt air everywhere. Whatever you plant, the Cape has the final say.

These gardens began with the same ambitions most gardens do: beds to fill, paths to edge, a sense of order imposed on an unruly lot. But Truro pushes back. The grasses lean toward the prevailing wind. The natives seed themselves where they like. And gradually, the line between garden and landscape begins to blur — which turns out to be exactly right.

What’s here now lives in that in-between space. There are plants chosen deliberately and placed with care — lavender and catmint, salvias and hyssops — tended from season to season. Hydrangeas, too, because this is Cape Cod and some things are simply non-negotiable. But the backbone is the natives: Wild Bergamot and Blue False Indigo, New England Blazing Star and Eastern Prickly Pear, among many more — plants that have grown along these shores long before we arrived. The whole thing sits somewhere between manicured and wild, tough and graceful and generous to the creatures that visit. From the first daffodil blooms in April to the Montauk Daisies and Bluebeards nodding into October, there’s almost always something in flower.

The pollinators, at least, seem comfortable with the arrangement.