Nutley -- Mountsier Garden

The Mountsier Garden has open lawn, curvilinear lines and tall clipped hedges separating garden rooms. Starting with an inherited half-acre property smothered by overgrown rhododendron, pieris, and mountain laurel, the owner gradually purchased adjacent properties and replaced those houses with smaller structures. Beginning in 1992, garden designer Richard Hartlage designed the 2.3 acre property to showcase more than 100 outdoor sculptures, some seen through openings in the high hedges. An eight-foot-tall lookout tower is camouflaged by clipped hornbeam, and a grove of Norway maples from an appended property is fronted by a 160-foot curving berm planted with four kinds of Japanese grasses. The front garden has star magnolias, Japanese snowbell trees and clipped American boxwood hedges.