Tour a New Canaan Garden Where Flowers, Bees, and Solar Panels Live Harmoniously

Raised solar panels provide protective cover for an array of plantings at this New Canaan residence, where landscape designer Brian Grubb planted grasses and colorful perennials to soften and enliven the unusual orchard.

The path that leads from the main house to the solar garden is flanked by boxwoods and Dwarf Gingko standards. The panels are arranged in “stands” of 15 each.

The poles are anchored to the ground by concrete foundations.

On summer nights, the owners can enjoy cocktails on a bench set next to the grasses.

The underside of the panels are painted white to make them less imposing. The profusion of plants blooming under the panels includes pink butterfly bush, autumn moor grass, northern sea oats (chasmanthium latifolium), Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light,’ and many cultivars of panicum grasses.

“The owners have a bold sense of color,” says Grubb, who used hardy hibiscus, lobelia and red coneflower to honor that aesthetic.

“The solar garden is meant to be its own thing, so that when you are in it, you are experiencing the garden as a separate feature,” says Grubb. Solar garden plantings include Seven-Son Flower (Heptacodium miconioides), Green Goblin (Pinus sylvestris), Monarda ‘Jacob Cline’ pink, Japanese iris (iris ensata) plus different cultivars of Joe-Pye weed and sedges.

Coneflowers are a mainstay throughout the garden.

The garden has a profusion of Agastache (‘blue fortune’ and ‘blackadder’) that lines one of the walkways.

The more formal part of the landscape is buffeted by trimmed fountain grass, while dwarf evergreens serve to screen the solar panels. “I like the precise geometry of the formal landscape contrasting with a real looseness,” notes Grubb.