A Victorian garden crafted over 40 years in Haddonfield
In late July, the half-acre corner property blooms with white daisies, pink cone flowers, crimson bee balm, multi-hued portulaca and vinca, tall yellow goldenrod, and more.
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Jim Vick and Julie Miller Vick display cherished heirlooms inside their Haddonfield home and outside in their verdant garden.
The couple purchased their three-story Victorian in 1983. A decade later, they built an addition, doubling the size to create a five-bedroom, 3½-bath house with a new kitchen and back stairs.
The Vicks also added a columned wraparound porch and hung flowering baskets from the ceiling. Gray composite siding replaced asbestos shingles. Exterior doors and window trim were painted deep red.
Most of the Vicks’ furnishings were inherited from family. A handsome pine cupboard in the kitchen came from Julie’s grandparents’ home in Missouri.
Jim treasures a Japanese compass displayed on a glass shelf in the living room. His father, Hoge, brought the compass back from Okinawa where he served as a Navy doctor during World War II. Nearby is a coffee table painted with pale yellow flowers from the Haverford home Hoge shared with his wife, Peggy.
Jim’s parents cultivated flowers in their garden in Haverford, which had a stream and a gazebo, Jim said. A white wrought iron chair and love seat from that garden are now in the Vicks’ Haddonfield backyard, and a spotted green and yellow aucuba plant was transplanted from Haverford.
The impressive, 40-foot cedar growing on the side of their home was a two-foot sapling when Jim dug it up from his parents’ garden. His parents’ tree had seeded from a large cedar his maternal grandfather, George Sprankle, planted in the 1930s near his Altoona home. A railroad engineer, Sprankle planted it in memory of railroad workers who died in an accident.
Yarrow and lilies in the Haddonfield garden came from Julie’s parents’ home in Belmont, Mass.
Two weeping cherry trees were 50th birthday presents to Julie from Jim. A fig tree heavy with ripening fruit in front of the garage was a 60th birthday gift to Julie from her son John and daughter-in-law Amanda. The Vicks also have a son David, a daughter Emily, and three grandchildren.
Jim, 72, and Julie, 73, met as students at Kenyon College in Ohio. “We would go walking through the woods with Jim pointing out the flowers,” Julie said. The delicate bluets and pink and white spring flowers in the Vicks’ garden once grew on the college campus. The couple married in 1977.
Jim, a former family medicine physician, and Julie, who was director of career services for graduate and postdoctoral students at the University of Pennsylvania, are now both retired.
Julie said she leaves the gardening to Jim but makes recommendations. At her request, he grows tomatoes and eggplants in a vegetable patch, ringed by pots of herbs. Raspberries Jim planted are a hit with the grandchildren.
Besides his parents, Jim credited his longtime friends, Laura Isenberg and Mark Byers, with encouraging his love of gardening. The blue Russian iris, white Solomon seal, and giant black-eyed Susan were transplanted from their garden in Boston.
When Isenberg died, Jim planted purple phlox named Laura in her memory.
In late July, the half-acre corner property blooms with white daisies, pink cone flowers, crimson bee balm, multihued portulaca and vinca, tall yellow goldenrod, pink and white long-stemmed Indian feather, and magenta dahlias. Coleus and caladiums add color to a shady side yard planted with ferns and hostas.
Jim purchases plants he did not acquire from friends and family from McNaughton’s Garden Center & Landscaping in Cherry Hill and from a nursery near his vacation home in the Poconos. Stepping stones, rocks bordering garden beds, and transplanted ferns also came from the Poconos.
Bumblebees hover over scented clethra. The white brush-like plant’s common name is “sailor’s delight,” Jim said, because sailors could smell the flower and know they were approaching land.
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