Peggy Zablotny’s garden is one I have been enjoying for years, without ever knowing whose it was. That’s because it graces the corner of Look Street and State Road in Vineyard Haven. I have admired her artwork — collages of flower petals and leaves — and was thrilled to pay a spring visit to her in her garden.
Peggy’s collages are made by hand and X-Acto blade, which can lift and place each element of the miniature works she creates. On her website you can follow along from garden to photograph to silk scarf or large framed print. Although she is primarily known as an artist who works with the flower petals she grows and saves to create a collage, Peggy, along with her husband and design partner, Stephen Zablotney, also creates museum and gallery exhibition spaces professionally. Wouldn’t it be great if they were chosen to do the new museum at the old Marine Hospital? I’m still keeping my fingers crossed.
Peggy and Steve first came to the Island in 1972, and moved to their present home in 1983. Peggy and Steve met as students at the Philadelphia College of Art, both majoring in industrial design. Her interest in the Vineyard was sparked by a 1961 National Geographic article while still in high school in Media, Pa. “I knew I had to be here,” she told me. When they finally got to the Vineyard, they stayed at Marguerite Bergstrom and Lydia Palmer’s Aidylberg B&B, now the Hanover House, renting from them for years, and never even walked down Look Street. After renting houses for a few years, they were ready to buy. When they visited the house on the corner of Look and State, the owner pointed to the corner lot and said, “The yard comes with it.” They were sold.
When they moved in, there were no trees out front, no flowers, but there were an apple tree, a pear tree, and a very old grapevine, all still bearing fruit, behind the house. The first thing Peggy did in the garden was plant raspberries, which she prunes down annually. “It’s very sad,” she told me about her apple tree. “The worms last year devoured every single flower. And they devoured every single flower on the pear tree,” leaving them concerned about this year’s blooms making it. There have been no apples since the infestation of worms. The apple tree, a low, large, sculptural presence, stood upright until “one of the windy storms.” She reminisced about limb losses, hurricanes, and advice to remove her beloved tree. Peggy uses no chemicals, and would never entertain the notion of cutting the tree down. She created a brick support for the low limb, and despite the hollowing of its main trunk, it lives on, enjoying the company of wrens. Despite her in-town location, she says, “The Cooper’s hawks come in and” —her voice rising — “will eat them.”
Peggy grew up with her parents’ garden, and her grandfather on her mom’s side was a farmer. “I think I have it in my genes,” she said. “I always wanted a cow. I think I’m over that now.” Peggy pointed to the raspberries: “This patch has been there since ’83. We bought everbearing, and every March, if you prune them back two to four inches above the ground, you’ll get a really big fall crop.” The grapevine runs along a side fence, creating a border with her State Road neighbor. Not only was the grapevine there when they bought the house, but no one can remember a time it wasn’t there. There’s a patch of ferns, also a gift of the land, that is growing beyond the raspberries.
“We’re going to put in a little seating area,” Peggy said about an area in the back, under the trees. She neatly used a branch which came down in a storm as edging along one planting bed. She has a newer apple tree that produces “tiny little apples,” though she’s not sure what they are. Last year they planted japonica; they’ve had a privet on one border with their neighbor, also trimmed down, in the hope it will come back. At this point in early spring, lamb’s ear is visible, and Peggy told me there are hydrangeas near where she planted beets and Swiss chard last year, which made it through the winter. The garden terracing in the backyard was created over their septic system and septic field. “I love Lynne Irons’ [Vineyard Gazette] column. She said cut it back all the way, so I did an experiment, and we’ll see how it does,” Peggy said, referring to her lavender. Quite often, she said, it gets too woody and breaks apart.
Beyond that, there’s a buddleia (butterfly bush). “I usually do that at the beginning of April,” she said. “You cut it back to last year’s growth, and then in the summertime it will be up here and blooming like crazy.” She moved on to the series of soft containers that ring what will be the new seating area. Peggy uses the containers for a lot of tomatoes and vegetables. After her aucuba blooms, she’ll cut it way back. The aucuba started from a plant she left behind in Philadelphia when they moved here.
Peggy found grow bags in a catalogue, and started using them two years ago. She has mostly soft containers, but also hard ones and large pots, which she covered through the winter by fashioning a tarp into multiple covers and then tying them. Her husband noted that it makes them look like jelly jars. I counted nearly 30 assorted containers. “The carrots grow really nicely in them,” she told me, and added that one thing that’s really cool is cats don’t bother anything in containers.
She has lettuce that made it through the winter. One year they built boxes for the potatoes, which have grown well some years and others not so. I wondered if the small house structure in the backyard is a potting shed, and learned that Peggy and her Steve built it for their dinghy Mirror (also built by them), a “stitch and glue” boat named for Britain’s Daily Mirror.
Peggy’s dad made the sundial, which she inherited when her parents moved from her childhood home. He was a woodworker, but both parents were creative people. When we returned to the large side yard, Peggy pointed out a flower bed which will be full of perennial sunflowers, daylilies, and peonies, which, she said, “I really need to pull out and plant because they are getting too deep in the ground.” There are more raspberries, some lilies, and a few plants — she said she has no idea what they’re called. There are Jacob’s ladder next to more flowers she’s not sure about, though she has used them in her artwork.
When they got the yard, Peggy decided to buy a “little eenie-weenie [flower] press, and pressed, like, three things.” Of course, that did not satisfy her, so she made her own presses and “started pressing everything” she could find. She began pressing in 1992, started making artwork from pressings in 1994, and had her first show in 1996 at the Field Gallery. This year she’ll be exhibiting new flower work and scarves at the Louisa Gould Gallery.
In the fenced dog area, Peggy planted zoysia grass, something she learned about from her parents after they heard radio and TV personality Arthur Godfrey advertise it on his radio show. “It was the most tedious thing,” she admitted, “because I plugged the entire thing.” Though she’s not so happy, the dogs love it. Their pear tree still produces “the most delicious pears,” and she hopes that the worms have moved on.
In another planting area are rudbeckia, the black-eyed Susan variety. “I love them,” Peggy said, “and they always grow well at the beginning, but they grow where they want to. They don’t like being transplanted too much, so I may leave them there.” I noticed a delicate white flower, which Peggy told me is leucosia, something she enjoys using in her artwork because of the delicate flowers. In fact, this was the first day to witness its blooms. She has a stand of mallows, an Island favorite from the hibiscus family. “That’s a Maximilian sunflower, and it started with one seed and I’m constantly pulling it out — it’s almost an invasive,” Peggy said, pointing. The plant grows up to 10 feet tall, and gets masses of three-inch, yellow-gold blooms along the branches.
Although Peggy grows tomatoes all over the place, this year she tried fava beans. “They said they were winter-hardy,” she reported, “and the first 17° night killed most of them, but three of them have lived.” Along State Road, they planted everything from the birches on the corner to the conifers, the holly, the japonica, and the maple. She keeps moving the edge, and said, “My goal would be to have no lawn, but you need pathways, so I’m growing some zinnias and vegetables.”
“I thought I’d take it all up,” she said, swiveling around, “but I kinda like the paths.” And so do I. “I grow a lot of kale in here,” she told me, pointing to her beds, “and beans — I grow as many kinds as I can find.”
Then she pointed out katsura, an Asian hardwood which she read about in a book, then found one year at Middletown Nursery. Now, 25 years later, it is a handsome tree that is both the first to leaf and the first to lose its leaves, “turning colors at the end of August.” About the Pee Gee hydrangeas, she said she “first saw them in cemeteries in Vermont with the most gorgeous big white heads that were greeny and pink. They’re beautiful, and I like to press hydrangeas.” I asked about garlic, something Peggy has never planted. When we scope out her remaining flower beds, she told me she has verbena, cosmos, morning glories, and who knows what else.
Peggy’s garden is vibrant, humble, and always a work in progress. Now you know who to thank when you drive or walk by Look Street and State Road, admiring a garden we all enjoy.
To learn more about Peggy Zablotny’s artwork and her process from garden to finished artwork, visit peggyturnerzablotny.com.
