By Andrew Bunting, PHS Vice President of Horticulture
On Ellsworth Street, nestled between Washington, Federal, and Moyamensing streets and adjacent to Jefferson Square Park, is the home and garden of Carrie Borgenicht. She lives in an approximately 200-year-old, three-story row house, where she has lived and gardened since 1999.
When she arrived, she had very little gardening experience, although in her youth, she was inspired by her dad’s vegetable garden and her mom’s flower gardens. Two of her sisters, who live in Baltimore and Wilmington, are gardeners now and are a source of horticultural engagement.
There is a very small courtyard garden to the rear of her house (south side) and a larger garden on the west side of her house. To some degree, all parts of the garden are shaded by her adjacent neighbors. She inherited a white-barked birch and a crape myrtle from the previous owner, which are key parts of the garden today. There is a gate that opens to the north out to the street. When she first moved in, a Bradford pear street tree needed to be removed, and she replaced it with a tiny sapling of a bald cypress, Taxodium distichum. Today, the tree towers over 40 feet tall and casts filtered shade on the garden. Most of the conditions in the garden range from full shade to part shade, with some sunny spots depending on the time of day.
When she moved into her house, Carrie worked in public health nonprofits, but she started to pick up gardening side work, attend conferences, take classes at PHS, and become a Tree Tender. Over time, she took professional landscape courses at Rutgers University. During the summers, she worked at the garden center at All Occasion Flowers on South Street. Fifteen years ago, she became a full-time professional gardener and started her business, Earthly Delights, where she primarily gardens for clients in Center City.
