Chanticleer Horticulturist Shares 'Design Principles of the Pros' on Sunday in Bridgehampton

For gardeners feeling like they are in a bit of a rut or could just use a new direction, the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons has just the thing.

This Sunday afternoon, February 11, the nonprofit organization welcomes Dan Benarcik, a horticulturist at the acclaimed garden Chanticleer, to present “Design Principles of the Pros That Can Be Applied to the Home Landscape,” his talk that provides design inspiration and motivation.

“It’s a talk that I put together years ago for both the beginner and the professional,” Benarcik said during an interview on Monday. He explained that just as writers develop writer’s block from time to time, gardeners develop gardening block or design block.

Whether its annual displays, container combinations or designing landscapes for clients, gardeners and designers are asking “What are we going to do this year?” He planned a talk that appeals to all types of gardens and gardeners to get them “out of the starting block.” It centers on five principles to choose from: scale, detail, repetition, innovation and destination.

What each of these principles means he’ll wait to reveal until his talk on Sunday. But he said gardeners can take no more than two or three of these principles to set them in motion, get their creative juices flowing, and think about their garden differently. “And then maybe next year, you employ other principles or you just change them around a little bit,” he added.

Benarcik said that over the years he’s been blessed with the opportunity to travel to gardens around the world for consultations and speaking engagements. He’s taken photos of those gardens to illustrate the five principles he touts.

He previously worked at Mt. Cuba Center and in wholesale plant sales, and for more than 30 years, he’s been at Chanticleer, one of the more than 30 gardens, arboretums and historic landscapes within 30 miles of Philadelphia that make up America’s Garden Capital.

Chanticleer, located in Wayne, Pennsylvania, is 50 acres, with 35 acres open to the public. It’s known as a “pleasure garden.”

“We celebrate the aesthetics of the garden,” Benarcik said. “That is to say that we separate ourselves from other area gardens because we’re not collections based or education based but aesthetics based, with roughly a one-mile strolling path around the garden. Different areas are managed by different primary gardeners, but it’s truly a garden of the gardeners. We don’t go through landscape committees and have designers or architects come in and design for us. It is the gardeners that design and implement and maintain the garden experience.”

Benarcik is one of Chanticleer’s seven full-time gardeners. There and around the region, he has become known for his seasonal display work with tropical, subtropical and tender perennials. He creates both in-ground and container displays.

“Container gardening has long been a part of my repertoire, but it also serves as an educational component because people come through and see what you can do with containers, what you can do with in-ground pockets, close to buildings, and then you sort of use both of them in your palette,” he said.

Benarcik has favorite plants that he uses because they are so dependable, he said, but at the same time, he always tries something new. “Otherwise designs and combinations will eventually get stagnant,” he said.

He shared some of his favorite non-hardy plants.

Melianthus major, the African honeybush, “grows wonderfully for us in-ground or in-container. It’s a textural dynamo, and not many people grow it.”

He’s also a big fan of bay laurels, olives and cycads, collectively. They are each very different plants unto themselves, but they are all cold tolerant, he said. “So I can bring them out in March and begin to build the bones of my garden long before the weather will support my seasonal or tender plants. And as on the other side, I can leave them out until November or December before I bring them back in. So they do a very long job for me without even being hardy.”

The plants can easily be overwintered in a cool atrium garden room, he added.

Another plant he recommends that is cold tolerant but not hardy in the Mid-Atlantic region is Phormium tenax, or New Zealand flax.

“It’s sort of purple to maroon to brownish leaves, but a very structural plant, strong architectural value — impact plant,” Benarcik said.

He manages a perennial tennis court garden at Chanticleer, and plenty of examples from that garden will be in his presentation as well. And because Chanticleer and the East End of Long Island both fall within USDA hardiness zone 7, his examples are applicable to the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons audience. In fact, one of his biggest suppliers, he noted, is in Mattituck, on the North Fork, Landcraft Environments.

“One thing you do have to keep in mind is sort of salt tolerance and wind tolerance for conditions out there on the end of Long Island that may not be the same concern for us,” he added.

In perennial gardens, he is also concerned with how they will look in winter and the shoulder seasons, including the massing, stem color and persistent grasses. He also uses what he calls “dynamic hedges.”

He said that though some will say that hedges are boring by definition, he has hedges that move, that rise and fall and swell in and out.

“Mass doesn’t have to be static,” he added. “Mass can be dynamic as well.”

Early February is an appropriate time for his talk.

“Now is the time for planning. Now is the time for inspiration,” he said. “We have the quiet of the offseason, where we can make our plans. We can make our plant lists. So that this time next year, maybe when we’re sitting inside and looking out on our landscapes, we can take it up a notch. We can employ maybe one or two of these principles and see if that doesn’t make our gardens that much more interesting and much more engaging.”

Dan Benarcik will speak on “Design Principles of the Pros That Can Be Applied to the Home Landscape” on Sunday, February 11, at 2 p.m. at the Bridgehampton Community House, 2357 Montauk Highway, Bridgehampton. Admission is $10, or free for members of the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons. Visit hahgarden.org for more information.