Pembroke Kyle cannot be pegged. Yes, she tends a sublime garden on the back property of her home in a quiet Topsfield neighborhood, and holds a “peony tea” for her close friends when the flowers are at their peak. But don’t think she is one to quietly putter among peonies in pristine cotton gloves. Kyle has run several half-marathons; posts gorgeous food photographs on Instagram; and runs a business, Picture Research Consultants, Inc., with her next-door neighbor, Sandi Rygiel, as visual historians specializing in American history.
But the garden has a special place in her heart. Filled with lush, soft-colored blossoms and intersected by meandering paths, the 80-foot spread of woodland plantings is meant to be viewed from above, as visitors gaze from the deck of the Colonial-style home Kyle shares with her husband, Bill Kyle. From that vantage point, they see a pastiche of blooming perennials, anchored by three large tree peonies.
“My parents were passionate gardeners; it’s in my blood,” Kyle says. In the early 1900s, her mother’s parents bought a 400-acre farm in New Jersey, and it became a beloved place for the family. Kyle’s grandmother, Jane Whittlesey Herbert, tended huge gardens behind the 1880 farmhouse. “I grew up wandering in her gardens,” Kyle says. When the farm was sold in the 1980s, her aunt pointed to a peony that hadn’t bloomed since the death of Kyle’s grandmother. Kyle scooped up the plant, and it fell apart into three pieces in her hands. She planted the pieces behind her Topsfield home.
Today, those three pieces—now the three tree peonies, with blossoms as big as luncheon plates—are testaments to faith, perseverance, and the wonders of nature. Underneath is a large oakleaf hydrangea; in the background are 15 12-foot rhododendrons and dozens of Casablanca lilies that fill the garden with fragrance every August. ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum and Bronze Coral Bells (Heuchera) stand sentry along the edge. “I have a lot of decorative foliage,” Kyle says in understatement.
The other key to the garden is Kyle’s husband, who gathers yards of oak leaves that fall on the property every autumn and turns them into mulch for Kyle to use. “Bill is the main reason my garden has been so successful,” she says. “It’s such a nice cycle of using natural materials.” Today both their sons—David, 37, a humanities teacher in San Francisco, and Kevin, 35, a winemaker in Napa, California—are avid gardeners.
Kyle admits that her love of gardening had a rocky start. In the first 10 years in the Topsfield home, she bought plants that love full sun, she says. “It took me a while to figure out the kind of garden I had.” When her son David was a sprout, Kyle recalls him saying, “Mom, the garden is starting without you!” She began to see that if she worked with what she had—a landscape that gets “about four hours of nice sun a day” in the growing season—it would thrive.
In the spring, she digs three big circles around the drip line of the tree peonies and distributes a mixture of super phosphate, osmocote, bone meal, and Epsom salt. To protect the garden from deer, she uses deer and rabbit repellent from the Liquid Fence Co., with a dash of Goya hot pepper sauce.
The rest of it is up to the plants. “The plants have to earn their space,” Kyle says. “If they give up and die, I figure it doesn’t need to be in my garden. After a while you don’t get the blue Corydalis to grow.”
Everything here has taken its rightful place, coexisting in harmony (except for the deer). “Mostly I watch the garden,” Kyle says. She loves her community, and she and Bill give an annual party for the cul-de-sac. And now and then Kyle, 69, tries something new, like participating in her first triathlon, held last July in Amesbury, after her neighbor, Shannon Howe, suggested it. “I was terrified,” Kyle says. But she finished and, as the only entry in the 64-69 age group, won. “It was a new challenge,” she laughs.
And she cultivates the right attitude. “What the garden has taught me is patience,” Kyle says. “You wait. If it doesn’t work out this year, there’s always next year.”