D
O YOU EVER WONDER ABOUT HOW FASHION designers dress when they’re at the grocery store? Or how an interior designer decorates her own home? Strolling through the tranquil landscape of the Missouri Botanical Garden, the question is bound to come up eventually: What does the Garden president’s own backyard escape look like? LN got an exclusive tour, and these pages share the beauty of Peter Wyse Jackson’s personal garden. Wyse Jackson’s home is situated atop a hill, and the backyard terrace overlooks the grounds—highlights of which include a diverse variety of trees, shrubs and flowers with informal paths winding through the greenery, as well as a small creek and pond, all inhabited by a healthy smattering of wildlife. “I certainly enjoy sitting on the terrace,” Wyse Jackson says when asked where he spends his rare moments of peace and quiet. “I feel it’s a great privilege to sit under two surviving American elms—because there aren’t many left.” As you would expect of a botanist, Wyse Jackson has been putting his own stamp on his home garden since he moved to St. Louis some three years ago. “I have a great interest in fruit trees, so we have planted quite a lot of new fruit trees,” he says. “Some of them are unusual like quince and medlar, but there also are more typical ones like apple trees, peach trees, gooseberries, black currants and white currants, and so on.” Most of them haven’t reached maturity to start producing much fruit, but when
they do, Wyse Jackson already has plans: “I like to collect the fruit and use them for my modest culinary experiments.” The fruit trees line the hill leading down from the terrace. At its base, a bald cypress arches over a pond, with characteristic Cypress knees (structures that look like roots) jutting out from its edges. “When people ask me what they’re for, I say, I don’t know—in fact, nobody knows,” Wyse Jackson says. “They may
{LadueNews.com} ELEGANT LIVING • SUMMER 2014
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