Romancing the Stone
Tucked behind 19th-century granite walls in Rockport is a garden that enchants at every turn.
When David and Nan Araneo moved to a house near Flat Ledge Quarry in Rockport in 1994 with their two young boys, piles of quarried stone lay like ruins in the woods, vestiges of the town's once-thriving granite industry. "It was all dust, rails, and equipment," says David, now 61.
While some may have been turned off by the mess, the couple embraced it, even though Nan was terrified that the boys, Matthew and Chad, would get hurt in the rocky landscape. "But for them, it was paradise," the 58-year-old yoga instructor now says. "Dave taught the kids rock climbing because he didn't want them to be afraid of anything." An excavator of foundations and septic systems, David had always worked with stone, and he began thinking of ways to take advantage of all that rock. Skilled in the use of heavy equipment and adept at chiseling, he began to transform the 2-acre property into a collection of Zen-like outdoor rooms featuring stone pergolas, porticos, and moon gates. "With garden rooms," Nan says, "there's always somewhere else to go."
The garden is so beautiful, in part, because of how the Araneos' house is sited; their three-bedroom shingled home is built inside the 15-foot-high granite walls of a former 1830s barn that was once used to shelter oxen working the quarry. A serene setting is established as soon as you walk up the cobblestone driveway and "enter" the old barn's walls. Since the house is smaller than the barn's original footprint, the stone walls also encompass a courtyard where bamboo, water, and granite slabs create a space perfect for reflection.
Step to the left of the barn's onetime entrance and you'll encounter a trellised walkway paved with a mosaic of pebbles and pottery. It runs outside the length of the old barn wall and leads to a granite patio built with flat pieces of rubble the couple found around the property. The couple built the patio after a 2000 trip to Italy, where they were amazed by the durability of ancient granite structures. "It was inspiring how much Italians care about their surroundings," David says. "Beauty is such a part of life there. Every flower and stone on the property would be carefully considered." The patio is sheltered on one side by an exterior barn wall and on the other by a small addition to the house that extends beyond the barn foundation. It's here that the Araneos entertain all summer long, serving fresh vegetables from their garden.
Over the years, the property has taken on the quality of an archeological dig. The more scrub the couple cleared, the more granite they discovered. And the more granite they discovered, the more David became inspired to shape it. Using simple hand tools, he split abandoned granite to make furniture for the patio, including a large round table, but he also created ornamental stonework. Plinths and columns evoke lost or distant cultures, while upright slabs simulate a warm human presence. One resembles a Chinese character, which David devised while making a curved bench; the leftover fragment was so interesting that he was moved to balance it on top of a granite post. "Accidental art," David calls it. Since Rockport granite weighs roughly 170 pounds per cubic foot, heavy equipment was used to lift or move slabs, but it was all assembled without cement, since the rocks stay in place under their own weight.
David believes that all plants look good against granite, but the scale of the stonework could easily overshadow a timid horticultural hand. Nan -- inspired by her mom, who was "amazing with flowers," and emboldened to be experimental by a friend -- has mixed evergreens, climbing roses, native shrubs, vines, and Japanese maples to create balance rather than competition between the stone and the plantings. Her yoga studio, which is over the garage, overlooks the peaceful gardens, and her students find it calming to stroll the outdoor space after class. If they're lucky, they'll catch a whiff of thyme, which thrives wherever the sun reflects off stone. A diminutive Asian-style guesthouse, left by the previous owner, juts out over a small pond and completes the meditative scene.
Growing up, the boys had always helped their parents move stone around. Matthew, now 28, missed it so much that he recently surprised David, who thought he'd be retiring soon, by suggesting that they go into business together. The result: Araneo Landworks, an excavation company specializing in the creative use of rock in landscape design. Granite and gardening have always been the source of family fun -- even when David might struggle to position a granite monolith with a backhoe and Nan wants it moved 4 inches to the left. They work it out.
"It's like living like the Flintstones," Nan says.
JoeAnn Hart is the author of the novel Addled. Send comments to magazine@globe.com 