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GARDEN QUEEN

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Garden Queen PASSION AND A RESERVED PANACHE MAKE KIT PANNILL’S GARDEN ONE OF PALM BEACH’S BEST

By SUSIE STANTON STAIKOS | Photography by JERRY RABINOWITZ

“There isn’t a plant I don’t like,” declares Kit Pannill, whose Palm Beach home refl ects her love of horticulture. With her gloves in one hand and gardening shears in the other, she strikes a strong silhouette against her beds of pink pentas and the lush greenery that covers her property. She is Monet’s Garden at Giverny painting come to life—and the beauty that surrounds her is a testament to decades of hard work and a lifetime of study.

In the 1980s, Pannill and her second husband settled in Palm Beach, eventually moving into a home with a long-neglected garden that Pannill has loved and nurtured back to life over the last 35 years. In 2020, the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach recognized her efforts at what is affectionately known as the “Lake House” and awarded her the Lesly S. Smith Landscape Award.

Nestled along the Lake Trail and divided into sections, Pannill’s garden curves around the back and side of her home. A narrow, shaded path leads to an open area and a white trellis slat house designed in the style of a nineteenth-century garden folly by Palm Beach architect Jacqueline Albarran of SKA Architect + Planner. The open trellis

Kit Pannill is renowned for her award-winning, multifaceted garden at the “Lake House” in Palm Beach.

Opposite page: A fi cus benjamina tree in the center of the lawn plays a starring role.

allows the humid air to pass through and nurture Pannill’s brilliantly colored orchids, all of which are at different stages of development. “Orchids do well in the trees, but in the orchid house they do need a lot of care,” she notes. “You have to spray them, not only with water but for all kinds of bugs.”

Pannill has been a student of gardening since age 6. During World War II, while her father was stationed overseas, Pannill and her mother lived with her great aunt in Petersburg, Virginia. “She was a great gardener,” Pannill says of her aunt. “She would take me out in the yard and talk about this and we’d do that. Once I got married, we moved to Vermont and lived in a little farmer’s cottage—a tiny place with beds all around—and I planted plants and flowers in the spring and summertime. I just loved it.”

In 1966, Pannill and her first husband were on the move again, this time to Tampa. Over the next 12 years, Pannill fostered her first Floridian garden and developed a fondness for orchids. When she returned to Virginia, her orchids came with her. Now, at her Palm Beach home, her collection continues to thrive and boasts a variety of beauties including Paphiopedilums, Cattleyas, and Vandas. In 2001, after working with the American Orchid Society on a project, an orchid hybrid was named the Vanda Kit Pannill Orchid in her honor. “It’s a pretty yellow Vanda, but it blooms in the summer when I’m not here,” she shares with a chuckle.

Pannill’s abundant collection boasts a bevy of beauties that reflect her horticultural passions, including, clockwise from top right: RLC Fragrant Cattleya, Coral Cactus, Crimson Cattleya, bromeliads, colorful blooms, and greenery.

Pannill did not have a vision for the garden at the start, but as things evolved the main area seen from the terrace became a canvas of green, with big pots of white begonias and other variegated plants in the beds. “I like to keep this part of the yard green and white,” she says. “In the other part of my yard, I call it a ‘Mexican hat dance,’ with all the colors in it from the pentas, different types of bromeliads, and euphorbias.” A spectacular ficus benjamina tree dominates the center of the lawn, with a skirt of roots and foliage around the bottom of the wide trunk that has hidden nooks and crannies

Above: Large orchid baskets hang from branches of the ficus tree like chandeliers.

Opposite page: The Paphiopedilum or Slipper Orchid features a unique front pouch and most typically flowers between November and March.

where orchids and other plants are nestled. All around the tree, large orchid baskets hang like chandeliers from the branches.

Pannill is an active member of The Garden Club of America and The Garden Club of Palm Beach, for which she helps to manage the maintenance and upkeep of the club’s botanical garden at The Society of the Four Arts. She has won numerous Best in Show awards at The Garden Club of Palm Beach’s biannual shows, and she’s received the Catherine Beattie Medal (The Garden Club of America’s top prize) five times.

“There are many beautiful gardens in Palm Beach,” notes fellow Garden Club member Christine Aylward, “but to have the deep horticultural knowledge also and want to be hands on is not so common. [Kit] is very accomplished in ‘hort’ and yet still very inquisitive about new things.”

For all its accolades, Pannill’s garden has had some setbacks. In October 2005, Hurricane Wilma crossed directly over Pannill’s home. “Things were twirling around and around,” she recalls. “After the eye of the storm, it came back a second time, and there literally wasn’t a leaf in my yard.” She notes that it was depressing to see her garden so barren, and her first inclination was to move and start anew. “After six months things did start coming back,” she says, “but it took a long time to recover.”

Pannill would be the first to admit that a gardener’s work is never done. She loves sitting on her terrace with a good book in hand, but inevitably, she notes, those peaceful moments are interrupted with a “What’s that over there?” Something as small as a dead leaf will jump-start her into action, putting pause to her restful terrace time. When it comes to tips for fellow gardeners, she suggests going with your gut and curating pieces that make you happy. “I just happen to love plants, and the weirder the better.” «

“I JUST HAPPEN TO LOVE PLANTS, AND THE WEIRDER THE BETTER.”

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