View a gallery of Judy Tomkins's garden.

Just outside the door of Judy Tomkins's porch, a cluster of stones spills haphazardly beneath a dogwood, creating a makeshift bed for 'White Parrot' tulips and Saunders peonies. "When the genius is there already, I garden around it," says Tomkins, whose 18th-century clapboard house is in a tiny hamlet north of New York City. This is not to say the landscaper leaves everything to nature. Sitting atop the stones is an antique Jizu figurine from Japan, the finishing touch on an already exquisite display.

In these gardens, seemingly random masses of tousled flowers pop up here and there, yet virtually everything has a reason for being where it is. During spring, the 80-year-old wisteria blooming over a terrace is flanked by beds accented with red, white, and black tulips and white bleeding hearts. Later in summer, mixed borders of hollyhocks, larkspur, delphiniums, and cimicifuga ("just to mention a few," Tomkins says) will take their place.

"Gardens to me are the frosting on the cake," Tomkins says. "It's the landscaping and the topography of the land that are so important." Her gardens flow with their surroundings rather than dictate to them, and the flowers she grows are often those she wants to enjoy in arrangements.



Tomkins, 81, had a career as a photographer before she embarked on a second career, at age 60, as a landscape designer, initially educating herself through books. She also developed an association with fellow garden designer Hitch Lyman, owner of Temple Nursery, in Trumansburg, New York. Lyman helped Tomkins broaden her knowledge of plants, she says, and she developed some strong likes and dislikes in the process. When it comes to foxgloves, only 'Excelsior,' white or apricot, will do, Tomkins says. The crape myrtle has to be white, not the usual magenta." Another predilection: "Almost anything that has the word rare in capitals following the name will draw my attention," she says.