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Even before his house was built, Nick Katanic had a plan for the 4-acre plot he and his wife, Maureen, purchased in Bath in 1995.
“I tried to take advantage of what was here to fit the vision of what I wanted to do,” says the 67-year-old retired IBM sales manager and Summit County Master Gardener President.
As a teen attending St. Vincent High School before it merged with St. Mary’s, Katanic volunteered as a guide at Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. The combination of symmetrical formal gardens and seemingly wild but well-planned woodland areas on that estate stayed in his mind long after graduating and moving on with his life.
“That probably shaped my interest in gardening and my ideas about what a garden should look like,” he says. “I wanted to have a naturalistic garden, and within that I wanted to have some formal areas.”
For 24 years, the Katanics have worked together to implement this grand scheme section by section. Now that he’s retired, he spends a solid six hours a day, five days a week digging in the dirt during the growing season. “Some people like to golf, some have a boat; gardening is my main hobby,” he says.
But after all those years of inching toward his ideal yard, the ultimate plan is still far-reaching.
“I’m probably two years away from having things planted,” Katanic says. “But the real story is, I truly hope when I’m long gone, whoever lives here 50 years from now will enjoy what I planted because it’s going to take 40 or 50 years for things to mature to achieve my ultimate vision.”
He got involved with Summit County Master Gardeners in 2008 and earned his designation as a Master Gardner Volunteer in 2016. His gardens were part of the Gardens of Distinction Tour in 2000 and 2007, and this year he is co-chairing the annual event with fellow Master Gardener Volunteer Kathy Blair. The six gardens on this year’s tour are a secret until the day of the event — June 29, rain or shine.
Katanic walks us through his dream of an estate garden, its connection to centuries of history and how he brought his plan to fruition.
Big Picture
Moving from a standard city lot in West Akron to an expansive piece of land surrounded by woodlands was the first part of the plan, as Katanic knew his vision needed room to grow. He and Maureen spent time walking the property, evaluating larger trees and plants, figuring out where different layouts could fit and deciding where to have their house built.
The careful planning has paid off in an impressive way. Upon entering the front door of the Katanics’ home, the sightline leads directly along the foyer, hall and dining area, through a back glass door to the formal garden behind the house.
“A view from the front, through the house, out to the garden on a long axis: that was a vision I had even before we built the house,” he says.
A Formal Fancy
Mossy shale and barnstones line a modest brick patio just outside the home’s back entrance, punctuated here and there by a magnolia tree and flowering bushes. With those in vibrant bloom, the entry to the formal garden is the real eye-catcher. A portion of black wrought-iron fencing rises to an impressive arch shaped like a bird that is embellished with gold paint.
“It came from my wife’s grandparents’ garden,” he says.
Through that structure, smooth grassy paths form a gridwork around raised beds that hold mounds of splashy flowering plants. Delicate snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and grape hyacinths peek out first in the spring, followed by salvia Caradonna and coreopsis in summer and chrysanthemums and Japanese anemone in autumn.
“This is a sunny perennial garden with a very formal path system,” Katanic says.
At the far end of this organized riot of color, a clump of hemlock trees looks entirely natural, though they were strategically planted to create an obstacle to walk around and lead you into something of a surprise.
Natural Fit
As you follow the grassy path around the hemlocks, a woodland garden unveils itself.
“In the height of the season, it’s entirely secluded back here,” he says. “You really feel like you’re back in the woods.”
Juxtaposing the straight lines of the raised beds and pathways of the first garden, ferns, hellebores and wildflowers expand beneath a canopy of trees in the second garden.
The centerpiece of this garden is a screened-in structure where Katanic and his wife often host gatherings. It feels like being in a hidden park.
“Some of the taller trees were here,” Katanic notes. “But some we planted 24 years ago before we built the house, my son and I, when he was maybe 10 years old.”
Until about two years ago, most of the trees were ash trees. Then an emerald ash borer from Asia ravaged the entire region in 2017, killing most ash trees in Ohio and Michigan — and leaving Katanic’s shady wooded area conspicuously sunny.
“I have put in a lot of swamp white oak,” Katanic says. “[They] were already growing back there on their own, so that’s a sign it’s a good environment, they like it there.”
He’s also cleared out any nonnative invasive species of plant and removed lots of dead second-growth elm trees, which grow haphazardly when farmland is left fallow but die after only 15 years. All this is to achieve the look of natural wooded land.
“It’s all planted but designed to look as though it just occurred in nature to blend in with the rest of the environment,” he explains.
The lush woodland surroundings follow curved lines that seem entirely organic, opening onto a small pond that borders Katanic’s and his neighbor’s yard.
Evidence of the Past
Almost camouflaged amid the tree trunks in Katanic’s woodland garden, a combination of round and vertical metal rises from the greenery like a statue near the pond.
“That is a horse-drawn hay baler that was left here by the farmer who owned this property 100 years ago,” he says.
Not far away, another link to an even deeper past sits at the edge of that pond on Katanic’s neighbor’s land. It’s a signal tree, a smaller version of the one people may be familiar with on Peck Road in Akron. Its configuration of lifelike limbs would have been a road sign to early Native Americans.
“The arms point in different directions,” Katanic says. “The one on the right points to Yellow Creek, and the one on the left points to the Cuyahoga River. It’s a legacy from a completely different culture, a different time.”
These links to the past give Katanic a real feeling of connection to the land and buoy his aspirations for leaving his own legacy for the future.
“It’s a neat concept that you could leave a little bit of lasting impression on the world, even if it’s just on your 4 little acres,” he says.
