New Orleans -- Fox's Lair

In 1979 this late Italianate style house, built in1879, was a wreck with an overgrown garden filled with elephant ears. The property is a small city lot in the Garden District of New Orleans. One of the owners was a classical architect who took on the renovation of the house but the couple sought professional help for plant selections that would fit their vision of the garden. The front gardens is dominated by a raised planter under large windows that is framed by needlepoint hollies. Plants include a limited palette of holy ferns, dwarf sasanquas, aspidistra, and seasonal annuals and perennials. Asiatic jasmine is the chosen ground cover, rather than grass. An old gnarled crape myrtle in the front garden was saved. Behind the house the color scheme is predominantly green and white with Mrs. G.G. Gerbing azaleas, sultans and begonias. Potted clivias add orange to the brick walled flagstone patio. A wall fountain has a Bacchus face mounted on stucco that was sourced in France. Other plants in the side beds include camellia and elephant ears. A patch with two varieties of Asiatic jasmine has been more successful here than St. Augustine grass, and contains a small pond. Savannah hollies form a privacy hedge across the back with a dark green painted wooden fence topped with camel-shaped lattice. A Chippendale style gate separates the garden from the car park. A small glassed-in solarium and elevator were later improvements. Fox's Lair was one of the featured homes in New Orleans' Preservation Resource Center's holiday home tour in 1991. Persons associated with the garden's design: René J.L. Fransen, FASLA (1980).