The Edible Gardens at Foothill Farm

A unique design combines vegetables and herbs with decorative annuals and perennials.

Susan and David Shonk bought his grandmother’s house in Dublin in 2014. Called Foothill Farm, the 1914 Dutch gambrel was once part of the Amory estate. A gentleman’s farm, it still has three stanchions in the barn for cows and two horse stalls. The home has been in David’s family since 1936 and was used as a summer house until his parents moved there permenently in 1980. Susan and David are the third generation to own it. “David grew up coming here his whole life. His parents retired here. This is where everybody in the family gathers,” Susan says.

Now they are very welcoming to family and friends. “It is an open house, they can come and stay any time they want,” she says. The attached barn is perfect for large gatherings, and there is a croquet lawn and platform tennis court. “We always play doubles—it is a very social sport,” Susan says. The court is smaller than a tennis court and is surrounded by tightly strung wire fencing that lets players keep the ball in play after it hits off the court and bounces off the screens. It is great racquet sport for winter. “We have winter parties, like our ‘Leftover Party’ after Thanksgiving or Christmas when everyone brings their leftover holiday food to share,” Susan says.

Thoughtful renovations

When Susan and David took ownership of the property, they made some major changes. The driveway was moved to the opposite side of the house with plenty of room for parking, and a new entry was created by Dan Scully, of Scully Architects in Keene. “The original approach was up an awkward driveway,” Scully says, “leaving the cars in front of the house with the mountain looming behind you, and barely even revealed when you turned around inside the house. It wasn’t until we looked at flipping the approach to the house that the design began to take on life.”

Now as you arrive at the property, Mount Monadnock acts as a backdrop for the house. “It allowed us to improve all our outside spaces and the way we experience the mountain,” David says. A former architect himself, David worked with Scully on the project.

“The new arched entryway gently mimics the mountain shape beyond, uniting them,” Scully says. “The reorientation facilitated a generous entryway; a more porous central hall, relaxing the flow through the house; and a better interior orientation with the central hall acknowledging and leading the eye toward Monadnock.”

Since Susan loves to cook and entertain, a new kitchen was a must-have.

“The tight kitchen was in a back corner, with little room to expand,” Scully says. It was very cramped and dark with appliances from the 1980s. “David and I did the kitchen layout,” Susan says. “We couldn’t get it to work until David came up with the idea of going out five feet to the east.”

By removing an old chimney, they were able to open up the kitchen to the dining room. “Working closely with Susan, her kitchen expanded internally and externally, gaining space and a counter layout surrounded in light,” Scully says.

“We played with the design for a long time, until we were able to come up with a layout that worked,” Susan says. “Andy Barrows, at ProStock Kitchens in Peterborough, was really helpful and patient, explaining the options and what would fit.”

New windows and off-white cabinets brighten the space, and a spacious center island gives plenty of work room for cooking and canning. “The large island is my favorite feature,” Susan says. “I love to make pizza and invite people over to ‘decorate’ their own. The island works great for that.”

Their builder was Greg Pease, owner of Beech Ridge Builders in Dublin.

“Greg did an amazing job,” Susan says. “He has great attention to detail and was creative with solving the problems that come with renovating a one-hundred-year-old house.”

“It was a daunting task to take a venerable, older family house on a site with great proximity to Mount Monadnock and transform it into a more open plan with a modern kitchen—while your clients are a great cook and an architect who grew up in the house but are living in Georgia. No room for failure,” Scully says.

Opportunities for edible landscaping

After the renovations were complete, the Shonks found themselves with new areas in need of landscaping. Susan turned to her longtime friend Laura Trowbridge of Peterborough, who just happens to be a garden designer. Together, they filled the new beds near the house with a mix of perennials, shrubs, annual flowers, herbs and even a few vegetables.

“I like using vegetables for landscaping,” Susan says. “Kale, Swiss chard, cabbages, amaranth and artichokes look beautiful in a garden, plus you get to eat them too.”

Shiso and “Bull’s Blood” beets offer colorful edible leaves, while nasturtiums and red zinnias intermingle with fragrant herbs, such as dill, rosemary and basil.

“Susan is great to work with,” Trowbridge says. “She is very decisive about plant preferences and also willing to try new plants. It makes a good combo for a client. She also does all the planting herself, so she is very invested in the gardens and wants to learn.”

Susan and Trowbridge designed a fenced-in area with ten raised beds for vegetables near a shed that provides running water and storage for tools and supplies.

Healthy eating

Formerly a registered dietician with a master’s degree from Boston University in clinical nutrition, Susan has always been interested in healthy eating and has recently adopted a plant-based, whole food diet. “I started researching it, watched ‘Forks Over Knives’ and then read ‘The China Study’ (what ‘Forks Over Knives’ is based on),” Susan says. “That was it; the facts were so compelling. Not only was being plant-based beneficial for the Earth, the health benefits were undisputable.”

To learn more about plant-based diets, she enrolled in an eCornell online certificate program in plant-based nutrition and completed it in June 2019.

“I have always been interested in healthy eating, and I have always loved to cook. So it has been fun experimenting and trying new recipes,” Susan says. “I am really lucky, my husband has been very supportive. He eats what I cook at home and then whatever he wants when he is out.”

Summers at Foothill Farm have given Susan the opportunity to grow much of the family’s produce, canning, freezing and fermenting any excess. She grows sprouts and microgreens indoors. An enthusiastic organic gardener, she says: “I love growing food to eat. The flowers are pretty and important to attract the pollinators—but I love growing vegetables.”

The raised beds are intensively planted with beets, carrots, lettuce, cucumbers, garlic, leeks and pole beans. Susan likes to cook with tomatoes, so she grows “Roma” tomatoes for canning. Not afraid of trying different things, she also grows round, yellow, lemon cucumbers; arugula; long, skinny Asian eggplants; and watermelon radishes, which are pink inside. “I’m a haphazard gardener,” she says. “I see it. I like it. I plant it.”

She also grows spaghetti, acorn and blue hubbard winter squashes along with zucchini and summer squash in a separate garden—because the squash vines like to run and take up so much space. She recently planted raspberries on the outside of the fence and has put in a new bed of asparagus.

“I’m so excited! This is all I eat. It is the best—breakfast, lunch and dinner,” she says.

There is some drip irrigation in the gardens near the house, but Susan prefers hand-watering the ten vegetable beds. “I like to look at them every day,” she says. This level of attention helps ensure success in any garden.

The new normal

Currently living in Atlanta, the Shonks usually don’t arrive at Foothill Farm until the end of May, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, David, Susan and daughter, Ariel, have been living at the house in Dublin since March. “This is the first summer I was able to start plants from seed in the house. Very exciting,” says Susan.

After quarantining for about a month, when the weather got nicer, the immediate family was back for cookouts, games and music every weekend on the back patio. “We barbecue, play cornhole and croquet, and follow it with guitar and ukulele playing,” Susan says of family gatherings. NHH

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RESOURCES

Beech Ridge Builders • (603) 252-6155 [email protected]

eCornell Online Certificate Programs ecornell.com/certificates

Laura Trowbridge Garden Design • (603) 562-5213 lauratrowbridge.com

ProStock Kitchens • (603) 924-9898 prostockkitchens.com

Scully Architects • (603) 357-4544 scullyarchitects.com

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Thai Basil Rolls

“I love discovering things I can make with what I grow,” Susan says. She shared this simple recipe for her Thai basil rolls, which she says are like a salad in a wrap:

1. Using hot water, soften rice wraps just enough to make them pliable and fill them with julienne-sliced, raw vegetables, such as beans and peppers.

2. Add some chives and pea sprouts, a spring of Thai basil and a couple of nasturtium flowers for color.

3. Roll it up and tuck in the ends.

“I like it to look rustic and homemade,” she says. “It is all raw and all from my garden.” She serves these basil rolls with plum or peanut dipping sauce.