A Haddonstone Piper figure overlooks the pond and a newly installed antique fountain.
What was, just 14 years ago, a gravel parking lot for an adjacent church is now a verdant garden behind the home of Mark Robertson and Marcelo Outeiro. The couple own and operate Nest Antiques, Art & Gifts, just a few blocks away in Richmond’s Woodland Heights neighborhood. That they are collectors by trade further reveals itself in this backyard paradise.
“Every week there’s something different,” Outeiro says. “There’s always something blooming.” Since they bought the home in 2006, they’ve been planting and tending: 10,000 bulbs, about 125 pots and countless other planted specimens. Beds border both sides of the fence, inside and out, providing even more opportunity to plant.
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Antique fruit basket finials, one of seven sets in Outeiro’s collection, adorn the gateposts.
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Marcelo Outeiro and Mark Robertson enjoy cocktails on the patio.
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Outeiro makes moss balls from moss harvested in the garden.
The central feature of the garden is a koi pond, watched over by a Haddonstone cast-stone figure at the far end. Roughly 25 fish — it’s hard to count, for they are in constant motion — inhabit the pond in mesmerizing flashes of orange, yellow and white.
“It’s like watching the fish play soccer,” Outeiro says. There’s also a resident squirrel, who takes a daily dip. A mix of liriope, blue eye grass and ferns around the edge helps keep the koi in the pond.
The antique fountain in the center of the pond is the newest acquisition. “It had been out of use for so long, but now with the sun, moss is beginning to grow,” says Outeiro. This is a good thing, particularly for someone who harvests moss to create moss balls, another garden delight.
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Robertson tends to the pitcher plants and ostrich ferns planted in the antique birdbath.
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Miniature topiaries
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A vintage Frog Prince fountain
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Antique statuary, urns, vintage pottery and china, moss balls, and plantings combine to create a lush vignette.
Like a well-collected interior, items in this outdoor living room tell stories. The bench at the far end of the garden, behind the pond, for example, was Robertson’s grandmother’s favorite place to sit during her visits before she died in 2009. They planted the pink dogwood above it in her honor, the only pink dogwood among many other white varieties around the property. Back here, too, a patch of lilies of the valley, which bloom in March, commemorates the couple’s anniversary.
A cozy patio off to the side, furnished with a table and chairs, serves as an outdoor dining room where the couple enjoy Robertson’s cooking if they aren’t dining on the screened-in porch. Here, Robertson has also handcrafted latticework along the top of the fence to support climbing hydrangea. Atop fence posts at the entrance are fruit basket finials — one of seven sets around the garden, something Outeiro collects. Birdhouses are scattered here and throughout the rest of the garden, many of them the result of Robertson’s handiwork, along with a birdbath and a special habitat for mason bees. Robertson recently built a potting bench for Outeiro, and it sits just outside this dining area. On the far side is another brick patio, this one with a birdbath featuring ostrich ferns, pitcher plants and a seashell given to Outeiro by a dear friend.
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The couple often enjoy dinner on the screened porch overlooking a patio furnished with an antique iron bench, obelisk and colorful porcelains.
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Vintage figurines nestled among the plants are a whimsical touch.
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Mesmerizing flashes of orange, yellow and white koi in the pond
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No matter the season, there’s always something interesting blooming along the garden path.
Outside the fence along the alley, the garden continues with espaliered apple trees as well as dogwoods, roses, peonies and hydrangea as summer’s mainstays. Bulbs bloom in every season — snowdrops, forget-me-nots and more. Along the back alley, a garden planted to host bees includes Joe Pye weed, goldenrod, bee balm, canna lily, crocosmia, tiger cap lily and a variety of mint. From this vantage point, Outeiro points out a tree here, a creeping ground cover there on adjacent properties, plantings they’ve done as a kindness for their neighbors.
There’s talk of reducing the number of pots — they need to be watered twice a day in the heat of summer, and they all need to come inside in winter — but Robertson says that when they get rid of four pots, two will make their way back in. Such is the way of collectors.
Though they call themselves “a little obsessed,” Robertson and Outeiro don’t take gardening too seriously; nothing is too studied or staid. Everything’s organic, and weeds are pulled by hand — most, anyway. The couple will tell you they’re happy if whatever’s growing is green. Outeiro often tosses coffee grounds, tea bags and banana peels at the base of plants for nourishment, though he says plants may or may not respond well to this carefree composting hack. “If it makes it, great; if not, I get to buy more plants.”
