Looking down from the top of Holy Hill,
flowers with religious or spiritual names are
abundant.
Inset: ‘Pink Grapefruit’ water lily
With ponds, a grotto, and
plants, plants, plants,
Vince and Mary Herring’s
magnificent garden
is a monument to their
labors and their love.
Grand
Garden
Story and photos by Terry L. Yockey
a
visit to Vince and Mary
Herring’s gardens near
Rochester leaves you feeling
amazed, inspired, and a little
overwhelmed. With so much to see, it is
almost impossible to absorb everything
in one visit, and many garden visitors
leave shaking their heads. Gardeners
and nongardeners alike find it hard to
grasp how these two incredible gardeners could have built and continue to
maintain their extensive gardens and
water features on their own with only
the occasional help of their three children.
One answer might be that they work
outside every day during the growing
season from dawn until dark, in good
weather or in bad. Another answer
might be that they don’t own a television, so when they do come indoors,
they are still planning and thinking
about what is in store for their next gardening day.
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A Country Home
It all began about 32 years ago when the
Herrings decided that they needed a
place where they could bring up their
family, grow their own food, keep chickens and goats, and also have enough
room for their framing and art gallery
business. In 1978, they found the perfect property on top of a hill just outside of Rochester. Its 21 acres were covered with huge oaks and other trees,
and it had the perfect spot for a house
and large vegetable garden.
The Herrings immediately started to
plant more trees on the property,
adding hundreds of pines, Black Hills
spruce, birches, maples, apple trees, and
several nut trees, including butternut
and walnut. Even though they did not
move into the house that they were constructing themselves until 1979, they
did dig up the ground and plant their
first vegetable garden.
This 60-by-20-foot bed included a
mixture of vegetables, herbs, fruits, and
annual flowers. They soon discovered
that the soil in their new garden was
heavy clay and chock full of rocks. They
went to a neighbor who bred bulls and
got loads of manure to work into the
heavy soil to make it more fertile and
friable. They also drove around
Rochester, looking for bags of leaves
that people had put out on the curb to
be collected. They even asked for the
elephant manure when the circus came
to town!
Their hard work paid off and the vegetable garden produced bountifully;
they not only had fresh produce for
their growing family’s table, but they
also did a lot of canning for future coldweather meals. They planted tree
seedlings on the perimeter of the garden, and when those got big enough,
they were transplanted elsewhere onto
the property.
Eventually the Herrings decided to
expand the garden, and they installed a
large perennial bed near the house,
which included traditional cottage garden perennials like peonies and garden
phlox and even some asparagus that
remained from the original vegetable
garden.
Ponds and Pools
They built their first small water feature
next to the house and liked it so much
that the next year, the Herrings made a
larger water garden in the center of the
circular driveway. Unfortunately, they
quickly discovered that water lilies and
other flowering pond plants did not
perform well in the shady location. With
the encouragement and help of their
son Kyle, Vince and Mary decided to
make a much larger and sunnier pond
not too far from the house.
The Herrings collected almost 2 million pounds of rocks and boulders from
a friend’s farm—it took two years to
place all the rocks around the perimeter
of the pond. Daughter Kristen would
stand in the hole to help Vince guide
the giant boulders into place around the
outside of the pond. With the boulders
rolling quickly down the hill to their
final destination just as a barefoot
Kristen scrambled out of the way, Vince
says the scene was often like an Indiana
Jones movie. He stresses that even
though it may have seemed a little perilous, they were always careful to make
sure that no one got hurt.
They originally planned on making
the pond about 14 by 20 feet, but when
it was finished three years later, it had
grown to be 40 by 60 feet and was
almost 10 feet deep. Vince decided that
it would be fun to not only use the pond
as a swimming hole, but also to have a
waterfall that would be big enough for
their grandchildren to stand underneath when they were swimming. The
result was a concrete and steel waterfall
Top: A stone arch welcomes visitors.
Below: Wide paver pathways lead from one area of
the garden to another. Inset: There is always a “work
in progress” at the Herring garden.
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Grand Garden
‘Miracle’ coralbells (Heuchera ‘Miracle’ PPAF)
line the walkway to Vince and Mary’s grotto.
The large swimming hole includes a waterfall that cantilevers 8 feet over the pond.
that cantilevers 8 feet out over the
water. Their six grandchildren love
standing under the falling water and
also swimming with the Koi and letting
the fish nibble on their toes.
Next came a bog garden where Mary
could grow cardinal flower and other
bog plants. The bog also serves as a natural filtration system for the pond.
Pond water is pumped through the bottom of the adjacent bog where the plant
roots filter out the sediment and debris.
The water recycles back into the pond,
clear and chemical-free.
Since making the large pond, the
Herrings have added several more ponds,
streams, bogs, and other water features
to their gardens. They learned their lesson well from the earlier water garden,
though, and sited most of the water features in sunny locations. In fact, Vince
boasts that their record is 72 water lilies
blooming at the same time.
Holy Hill
When building the large pond, Vince
and Kyle created a pile of dirt that the
family has now dubbed “Holy Hill.”
Because children are fascinated with
tunnels, Vince made a 60-foot hobbithole tunnel through the hill using
cement culverts for supports. The handcrafted round wooden doors on both
ends of the tunnel are painted a bright
fluorescent purple. Why purple? “I just
like purple,” Vince replies.
The grotto is the centerpiece of Holy
Hill and was built to showcase a statue
of the Virgin Mary, blessed by Pope
John Paul II, that the Herrings purchased during a pilgrimage to Rome.
The grotto took three years to build and
all the walls are made from Chilton
limestone. Small shelves built into the
walls hold votive candles that can be lit
while meditating in the grotto.
Vince used the top of an old farm silo
as the form when he poured 70,000
pounds of concrete for the domed ceiling of the grotto. Mary and her daughter Kendra then created a large suspended mosaic-tile mirror and glass
piece that glows directly overhead. They
drilled holes and embedded fiber optic
lights into the glass ceiling, which gives
a beautiful shimmering effect. The ceiling was constructed in four sections so
it could go through the grotto door.
When assembled inside, it weighed over
850 pounds. The large glass piece is suspended on heavy chains that can be
lowered and raised when the Herrings
need to work on the ceiling.
A Gardening Team
Although Mary grew up gardening in
Hayfield, Vince had never gardened
before they purchased their property in
the country. He still does not consider
himself a gardener so much as a “hard-
Surrounded by flowers, children love the whimsey of the hobbit hole in the garden.
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scaper and idea person.” Mary is a plant
collector and likes to try new varieties
every year, especially if they are new
coleus or hosta varieties. She starts
more than 2,000 coleus from seed and
almost 600 coleus from cuttings every
season. She has collected more than
400 different varieties of hostas and
more than 300 different coleus varieties
and maps each and every one, recording
where and when she acquired it, the
price she paid, and where it is planted.
Vince declares, “Mary has a phenomenal color memory.” He tells the story
of when she visited a botanical garden
and fell in love with many of the varieties of coleus that were growing there.
As an avid collector, she couldn’t leave
until she had figured out a way to
acquire at least a few of them. She
approached the director of the gardens
and he agreed to sell her a tray of small
cuttings the next spring. Sure enough,
the cuttings arrived the next year—all
135 of them! Mary took one look and
knew right away that one was missing.
She had remembered its exact markings and colors. When she called the
botanical garden, sure enough, one had
been inadvertently left out of the shipment.
Mary also enjoys collecting religious
and spiritually named varieties of
plants to populate the top of Holy Hill.
Some of her favorites are ‘Holy Moly’
Mary’s Favorite Holy Hill Plants
Sun-loving plants cover Holy Hill.
hosta, ‘Miracle’ heuchera and ‘Sunday
Gloves’ daylily.
The Herrings enjoy showing people
through their extensive gardens and
sometimes have as many as four tour
groups in one day. Their record was a
weekend with 2,000 visitors.
Because visitors are almost a daily
occurrence, some are bound to come on
a rainy day, so last summer the
Herrings built a new shelter they
dubbed the “Bus Stop.” Standing in the
new covered structure, visitors will be
able to view Holy Hill, the new stream
and bog garden, and even watch the
goats and llamas playing nearby without
feeling a drop of rain.
When asked why they share their gardens with so many others, Mary replies,
“We have met so many nice people
through gardening.” Vince’s response?
“That, and I don’t have to weed when I
am showing the gardens!”
‘Holy Moly’ hosta (Hosta ‘Holy Moly’)
‘Praying Hands’ hosta (Hosta ‘Praying Hands’)
‘Guardian Angel’ hosta (Hosta ‘Guardian
Angel’)
‘Cathedral Windows’ coralbells (Heuchera
‘Cathedral Windows’ )
‘Sunday Gloves’ daylily (Hemerocallis
‘Sunday Gloves’)
‘Spiritual’ daylily (Hemerocallis ‘Spiritual’)
‘Hope for Humanity’ rose (Rosa ‘Hope
for Humanity’)
‘Elijah Blue’ fescue grass (Festuca glauca
‘Elijah Blue’)
Angeleyes® geranium (Pelargonium
‘Angeleyes’)
‘Pope John Paul II’ clematis (Clematis
—T.Y.
‘Pope John Paul II’)
Vince and
Mary Herring
Red Wing-based Terry Yockey is a Master
Gardener and publisher of the website
www.northerngardening.com.
Visit the Herrings with MSHS Join MSHS for a summer tour of this magnificent garden.
The tour is scheduled for July 9. For more details, visit www.northerngardener.org.
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