On the inside, looking out

September 2015: the Conservation Commission is
satisfied with what Betty and I have wrought

Ten years ago in April, Betty and I moved into our newly-built ‘dream retirement house’, our seventh and final home. After decades of moving into houses built by someone else, this one – finally – was of our own design. The lawns and gardens of those other properties were, of course, also someone else’s idea of ‘appropriate’.

You should be able to admire
a garden from inside a home

Just as we had specific ideas about the layout of our house, so Betty had an entire notebook of thoughts about the garden’s design and content. And one of those ideas was something I had never thought of: a garden being something to be admired from inside the home as well as while standing in it.

Her thinking was eminently practical, even though it seemed to go against so many conceptions about "what gardens are for". Betty’s thought was based on the observation that no one wants to be standing in a garden on an 87 degree day with a dew point of 75... and New England has far too many such days. The plants, though, love that kind of weather. So, why not think about sight lines from inside the house when you're getting ready to create that garden? 

That inspiration guided the siting of the house on its lot. Instead of placing our home the same distance back from the street as our neighbors (as was the existing house), we opted to build thirty feet farther back. Doing so provided two advantages: a much deeper garden in front to provide additional privacy, and a clear line of sight in three directions for a large screened porch the we suspected would be where we spent much of our summer hours (and from which this essay is written).

A full-sized window in
the master bathroom?

A view to the outside also affected the design and placement of windows. It takes an act of faith to place a 32” x 48” window in the middle of your master bath. Yes, it has shutters; but they’re left open. To create a full view of the back garden from our new home’s living room, four continuous, extra-tall windows spanning ten feet were incorporated into the design. The library at our soon-to-be old home had been the place where we spent many hours reading or listening to music. The ‘new’ library was designed to have three windows, each with a separate vista.

The view from the kitchen

In October 2014, and with the shell of the house now in place, Betty began sketching a garden concept – imagining the view out of each window. Nothing was cast in stone because we were still at least six months away from choosing the trees that would anchor each bed. But the intent was clear: ensure whatever trees were chosen did not block views from windows. A line of shrubs – each distinct in color, leaf, and form so as not to be mistaken for a hedge – would go across the front of the property to provide a primary privacy screen.

One view from the screened porch

For the first half dozen years, the ‘inside out’ concept was moot. Shrubs and trees were small and seemingly dispersed around a sea of mulch. The lower shutters in the master bath definitely remained closed. Then, seemingly almost overnight, it all came together. The ‘groups of three’ shrubs we had planted (such as Fothergilla, Itea, and Clethra) merged into visually arresting masses.

Ten feet of windows capture the rear 
garden from the living room.

In this, the garden’s eleventh season, the ‘inside out’ philosophy has been verified. The view from the screened porch from every direction is remarkable (even though an allowance was made to allow two Viburnum nudum ‘Winterthur’ specimens to grow to their full, ten-foot height; the better to display their June flowering). The view from the window over the kitchen sink is of blueberry bushes where, at any given time, a rotating cast of birds are gorging on the 2025 crop. And, the views from the library are, well, take a look at the photos. ‘Sublime’ comes to mind.

The view out the front door

My favorite view may be out the front door. A bluestone sidewalk gently bends to the left; flanked on either side by low plantings of perennials that gradually rise to a sweep of Rudbeckia and Monarda, beyond which are those clumps of shrubs. A seldom-used second-floor guest bedroom (as part of aging in place, the rooms we use daily are all on the main floor) has the same view as the front entry, but elevated.

Except for the obvious one, all of the accompanying photos were taken on July 20, 2025.

A September Gardening Tale

Every year in August, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sets aside one weekend when the state’s 6.25% sales tax is waived on purchases under $2,000.  The tax holiday was originally intended to help strapped parents lessen the cost of school materials for their children, and college students stock up on critical dorm items such a newer model expresso machine.

 Like all good ideas, though, the tax holiday quickly spiraled out of control and became the once-a-year opportunity to reduce the final price of 84-inch hi-def televisions, iPhone 11s, and Peloton exercise systems. Back-to-school backpacks have long receded in the rear-view mirror.

Pop quiz: On August 29, 2020, which of these items did Betty and Neal buy (hint: the title of this blog contains the consecutive letters g-a-r-d-e-n)?

a)     A CyberPowerPC gaming system to save $106.25 in sales tax

b)     A Fuji Sportif racing bike to save $61.69 in sales tax

c)     A Kitchen-Aid convection microwave to save $48.43 in sales tax

d)     Seven cubic yards of dark brown mulch to save $14.37 in sales tax

* * * * *

The mulch was delivered by Sam White & Sons on September 1, and piled neatly on the parking pad in front of our home.  We, of course, were on our way to the beach.

I should add a note about Mr. White’s business.  If the Harvard Business School was truly on the ball, they would send out a crack team of grad students to write a case study on Sam White & Sons, and then devote a full semester each year to learning the genius of his business model.  When you walk into the Sam White’s office, you see two credit card readers.  As we paid for our mulch, I started to insert my credit card in the one on the left.  “Use the other one,” I was instructed.  “What’s this one for?” I asked.  “That’s for incoming stuff,” was the reply.

Apple Computer has a trillion-dollar market valuation.  In its most recent quarter, it’s ‘cost of goods sold’ was about 62 cents for every dollar of revenue, meaning its ‘gross profit margin’ was about 38 cents per dollar of sales.  Sam White & Sons has no ‘cost of goods sold’.  In fact, it charges you to drop off the same stuff they will sell to me.  All they do is grind it up, sort it by size and color, and put a price on it.  If the company went public, I figure Sam White’s market valuation would be a couple of billion, easily.  Enough on the subject.

Our first act as gardeners
was to top our loam with mulch

The front of our property (the back is wetlands) is roughly half an acre and there is nary a blade of grass to be seen. It’s all plants: trees, shrubs, perennials, and annuals (well, there’s also a house and a driveway, so let’s call it 20,000 square feet of garden).  After five years, those plants – and especially the shrubs and perennials – have made it a fairly dense proposition.  Back in 2015, our first act as gardeners was to put down four or five inches of mulch atop 965 cubic yards of loam before we planted anything on the property. 

Five years later, our garden is quite dense

Mulch, however, breaks down over time into, well, soil.  By this summer, the remaining mulch was thin enough weeds grew through it.  We needed to do something.  The logical thing would be to call a garden service and tell them to come mulch our garden for us.

But there was much more to the project than just throwing down mulch.  Volunteer plants – and especially wandering perennials – had insinuated themselves into areas of the garden they didn’t belong.  Tiny but insistent weeds needed to be dug out; throwing mulch on them would only retard their inevitable appearance.  Shrubs needed to be thinned.  In short, this was the kind of eagle-eyed and meticulous work that could not be entrusted to an outsider. We had to do this project ourselves.

The mulch pile, roughly half gone

We started every morning at 6:30 and worked until the sun made gardening uncomfortable – always before noon.  And, we made good progress.  The pile dwindled each day.

But it was still there: out where everyone driving by could see it.  When a week passed and three cubic yards remained, we began pushing ourselves to finish what we had started.  Last Thursday we made a final, gallant effort to finish the job, and succeeded in at least making it look to nosy neighbors like we were done: all the mulch was now in the back of the garden and the parking pad was mulch-free.

We took care of lots of
garden maintenance

And, sometimes when you’re at the end of a job, you press too hard.  That’s what we both did.  On that last morning, Betty later acknowledged her back been bothering her (she has the eye and the horticultural knowledge to know what ought to be removed; my skills are weeding and making pretty edges with the mulch).  By mid-afternoon, Betty’s back was telling her she had abused it once too often.  By Friday morning, the act of getting out of bed was excruciating.

Five days and two trips to urgent care later, her back is feeling better.  The garden looks magnificent; not just because of the mulch, but because of the culling of surplus plants and the removal of six, 50-gallon bags of garden detritus.

There's no question about its beauty...

There is a lesson here, but I’m uncertain what it is.  On the one hand, Betty and I ought to have done the obvious thing and hired one of the six ‘garden maintenance’ firms in Medfield to do the spreading for us.  But had we done so we would have hovered over whomever we had hired at $15 an hour to ensure they were doing the job properly.  And, we would have inevitably become frustrated because hired hands never spy everything the gardener sees.  We would have been in the garden exactly as long as if we had done it ourselves and have paid other people handsomely in the process; but at least we wouldn’t have back spasms.

...and we're good on maintenance until spring

On the other hand, at 70 and 71, we’re getting to the age where both bicep-building and stoop gardening induces back pains.  Fortunately, Betty designed our garden to be ‘low maintenance’. Unfortunately, ‘low maintenance’ is still ‘some maintenance required’.  September’s mad dash to get a job done will carry us through to next spring.  By then, however, hundreds of birds will have deposited alien seeds (complete with fertilizer packets), around the garden. The wind will have brought in still more interlopers, and rhizomes will be rhizomes.  In short, the whole rodeo starts again in March.

Fortunately, nothing will be piled in our parking pad.

We've Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden

There’s an old saw about grandchildren that goes, ‘if you haven’t seen them in a year, you won’t recognize them’.  I think the same can be said of the best gardens.  They continually evolve as they mature.  We hadn’t been to Bedrock Gardens in (gulp) two years but, this past weekend, we carved out a beautiful Saturday to see what Jill Nooney and Bob Munger have been up to.  The answer turns out to be ‘a lot’.

The garden deliberately breaks
design rules, but the effect is magical

To the best of my knowledge, Bedrock Gardens has no basis for comparison in New England.  It is the idiosyncratic creation of two people who have transformed 35 acres of one-time dairy farm land in rural southeastern New Hampshire into a space that is equal parts intelligent horticulture and sheer whimsy, with an accent on the unexpected.  It also an ‘art park’ – an expression I generally detest, but use here because it is a wholly accurate description.  And it is a garden that is not afraid of shade.  More than half of the property is heavily wooded, yet under the canopy of those tree lie some of Bedrock Gardens’ most beautiful and enchanting spaces.

Garden art

Jill is what the brochure describes as the ‘horticultural and artistic force’ behind the garden.  She designed the garden and largely chooses the plants for it.  She also builds the art you see all around the place.  And, ‘build’ is quite accurate.  Much of her work involves taking industrial and farm machinery and reimagining it as sculpture.  While I’ve included a few samples, you can peruse a more complete gallery here.  Bob has the more prosaic responsibilities of maintenance, digging holes and moving rocks (although he is also credited with creating and executing several of the intricate stone walkways on the premises).  He is definitely a Principal Undergardener.

Double-click for a full screen view

If I were to attempt to articulate the design philosophy that underlies Bedrock Gardens, it would go something like, “If you see a rule, break it.”  The garden abounds in plant and color juxtapositions that force the viewer to reconsider his or her idea of what is ‘right’.  Yet the overall effect is as glorious as anything you’ll encounter in, say, the New York Botanical Garden.

A profusion of blue pots

There are no fewer than 23 distinct gardens within the property.  Seeing them all requires half a day and sturdy walking shoes.  Truly appreciating them requires multiple visits.  This is the kind of garden that invites you to frequently turn around and see where you’ve been.  The perspective changes; sometimes subtly, other times wildly.  There are also two major axes.  A 900-foot-long one extends from a pair of thrones across a pond to an allée, a torii, and a spiral garden.  An 850-foot-long one extends from a barn across an acre of red, green, and blue grasses to the aforementioned torii and terminating at a CD tree (don’t ask). 

A shrine to hay rakes

The garden has evolved since our last visit.  The ‘acrobats’ sculpture is now preceded and framed by the beginnings of a beech arch that will take another five years to make its statement.  I do not recall seeing the ‘thrones’ on my past visit and the ‘Baxis’, a parallelogram-shaped arch is a stunning addition.

More garden art

Four years ago, Jill and Bob established a non-profit ‘Friends of Bedrock Gardens’ to begin a process to preserve the garden for future generations by converting the property to a public garden and cultural center.  The project is apparently well underway.  John Forti, who left his mark on Strawbery Banke and Elm Bank, was named Executive Director earlier this year.

Bedrock Garden will next be open in 2017 on September 16 and 17, and then one final time on Columbus Day weekend.  In the phrasing of the Michelin guides, this is ‘worth a journey’.

Here's a 45-second-long video of what the 'Wiggle Waggle' part of the garden looks like.

What They Wrought

Groton - it really is this beautiful

New England is full of beautiful towns.  They are small gems; vestiges of another time and certainly another century.  The best of these towns are beautiful because of civic pride.  The towns have families or institutions that seek to preserve the best of the past while accommodating the present and planning for the future.

Edmund Tarbell's 'In the Orchard'
is said to have been painted in Groton

Any short list of the most beautiful New England towns would include Groton, Massachusetts.  It is a village of 10,000 people roughly 40 miles from Boston’s Financial District.  The Nashua River flows through it; Gibbet Hill in the center of town provides beautiful vistas of the surrounding countryside.  Groton is or has been home to people as diverse as painter Edmund Tarbell, William Prescott (who commanded his troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill not to fire “until you see the whites of their eyes”), and rock musician J. Geils.

In short, Groton is the kind of town you would think doesn’t need improving.  Just say ‘no’ to all development, shut out the world, and enjoy the beauty.  That, of course, is a recipe for stagnation and inevitable decline.  For every Groton there are half a dozen sad New England towns that time passed by, leaving only decaying buildings and faded memories. 

Groton preserves its history, but is
hardly frozen in time.  The Boutwell
House was home to Massachusetts Gov. 
George Boutwell, who also served as
Treasury Secretary under Pres. Grant.

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to see one of the reasons why Groton remains so beautiful.  The Groton Garden Club invited me to come talk about books at the town’s library and, in the course of that visit, I got to be an adjunct on a tour of wayside gardens the Club has created and, in all but one case, maintains.

‘Wayside garden’ is (at least to me) a collective term for everything from formal gardens to planted memorials and pocket parks.  A good wayside garden can be appreciated from an automobile passing by at 30 miles an hour.  It can also be a place you can walk in, explore, or sit and contemplate.

This tree and shrub garden honors
native son William Prescott

The Groton Garden Club maintains five sites around town.  Each one has a unique history and purpose.  There’s a tree and shrub garden honoring William Prescott of Bunker Hill fame.  It is simple, dignified, and well designed.  In the center of town is the Hollis Street triangle, which transforms what would otherwise be an undistinguished traffic island into a memorable patch of color and low-growing shrubs. 

This Blue Star Memorial By-Way
Marker is a tribute to those who
served in the Armed Forces

There’s also a Blue Star Memorial By-Way Marker on Sawyer Common.  For those not familiar with the Blue Star Marker program, it is a long-standing project of National Garden Clubs, Inc. The program encourages local garden clubs to place markers – typically bronze plaques mounted on stone – that honor those who have served in America’s armed forces.  The one placed by the Groton Garden Club in 2011 is surrounded by arborvitae and fothergilla that looks good anytime of the year, but is especially colorful in the autumn.  The marker sits in the shadow of a rare, mature black walnut tree.  A simple nearby stone bench provides a place to rest and remember.

The Groton Garden Club's work at
Boutwell House earned the club
recognition from National Garden
Clubs Inc. 

Next to the town library is a poignant memorial garden for which the Club has care and maintenance responsibility.  On September 11, 2001, Peter and Sue Hanson, and their daughter, Christine, of Groton boarded UA 175 for Los Angeles. The simple plaque is surrounded by lilacs and fall-blooming perennials (timed to coincide with the attack’s anniversary).  The memorial is also adjacent to the playground where Christine Hanson, who was not yet three years old, spent many afternoons of her too-short life.

The 'Four Corners' garden at the busy
intersection of two state highways
required seven months of state review

We also saw the Club’s handiwork at the Boutwell House, home of the Groton Historical Society.  It isn’t formally a Club-maintained site, but the Groton Garden Club designed and planted a garden there and, this year received the Kellogg Civic Achievement Award from National Garden Clubs, Inc.  The project involved beautifying the area around the handicapped-access ramps.  Such ramps are usually a no-man’s land of concrete, metal, and asphalt.  Aided by a new, well-designed ramp, the Club designed and installed a garden focusing in native shrubs.  The result is an eye-catching area that enhances the historic building while effectively ‘hiding’ the necessary ramp.

A few of the people responsible for
creating and maintaining those
gardens.  From left to right, Barbara,
Laura, (guest) Betty and Ann.

The Club’s most recent project is also its most ambitious.  While the center of Groton is filled with charming small shops and offices, there is also a development east of town with a supermarket, drug store, and other commercial activities.  The development sits at the junction of two state highways and, as a result, the easements are all state property with stringent restrictions on preserving sight lines and such.  A lesser club might have taken a pass on trying to create something beautiful for such a site, but the Groton Garden Club persevered through seven months of state review and approvals.  Last fall, the Club installed a superb, roughly 700-square-foot perennial garden in a triangular-shaped traffic island.  Instead of a flat expanse of grass (or, more likely, weeds) there’s a beautiful raised-bed garden that lends a sense of place to an otherwise anonymous suburban site.  The result is a model for other towns to emulate.  

Green Mountain Gem

Roughly seven years ago, Betty went to a lecture at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.  I was still deeply engrossed in something called “the corporate world” and so merely raised my hands in a helpless gesture when Betty asked if I’d like to accompany her.  She came back from the talk raving about the speaker and his topic, which was “how to tour a garden”.

The speaker that evening was Gordon Hayward, and his thesis was that visiting a garden ought to be considered a treat because it can help us see our own garden more clearly.  His simple premise: keep an open mind.  Too often, he told his audience, we walk into a garden just to see what we like and we don’t like.  Our prejudices get in the way of learning anything, be it a different principle of garden design, color choice or ornamentation. 

On Saturday, we visited Gordon and Mary Hayward’s garden in Putney, Vermont, which was open as part of the Garden Conservancy Open Days program.  Their garden is an acre and a half of inspiration, and humbling inspiration at that.  In addition to lecturing and writing on horticultural topics, Gordon Hayward also designs gardens, and his catalog of projects is nothing short of stunning.  If a ‘great’ garden is one from which you can take away inspiration, then this one is truly superb.



Here is the garden plan. 
Double-click to get a
slightly larger image.



The garden contains eight distinct areas (the diagram at left is, unfortunately, a very low resolution image).  The Haywards have incorporated a woodland garden, an outdoor dining area, a spring garden, a pair of mixed borders as well as long borders, dry and moist shade gardens, and a formal herb garden.  Parts of it are very formal, much of it is highly informal, and all of it is designed to encourage wandering as an aid to discovery.  Paths are everywhere; they become visible only when you come upon them, then promptly disappear from view a few steps further on.  (Here are some photos of the garden in other seasons.)

Frogs play musical instruments

Whimsical elements are pervasive.  There’s a Druidic image of the Green Man, carved into the stump of a butternut tree, representing the meeting place of the worlds of man and plants.  Frogs play musical instruments on birdbaths.  Wire-frame sheep ‘graze’ on the lawn.

Clipped boxwoods lend structure
to the garden

But everywhere is also a keen eye for design and the creators’ knack for visually leading the visitor from one garden space to another.  Gravel around a tree base sends a subliminal command to pause – “this is important”.  Paths lead to vistas of the surrounding fields and mountains.

Paths lead everywhere

The garden has been nearly thirty years in the making but is still growing.  Fifteen years ago, the Haywards uncovered a cracked concrete floor behind their barn where perhaps a half dozen cows would have stood in their stanchions. Less innovative minds (certainly including my own) would have ripped out the  concrete and started fresh.  The Haywards filled the cracks in the concrete with drought-tolerant, ground-hugging perennials.  Today, the area is a tapestry of succulents and flowering perennials, with the gray concrete reduced to a few small areas that bespeak its original purpose.

Betty with Mary
Hayward

It is a garden that encourages the taking away of ideas and, in turn, this garden was inspired by others.  Mary Hayward grew up across the fields from the Hidcote Manor Gardens in the Cotswolds; Gordon grew up in Connecticut farm country.  The Haywards’ garden incorporates the concept of ‘rooms’ that are one of Hidcote’s principal features.  It also includes apple trees that were part of Gordon’s boyhood.

It was, in short, an enchanting day in a gem of a garden.

Would You Like a Townhouse to Go Along With That Garden?

The Boston Flower & Garden Show opens on March 14 - eight weeks and two days from today.   I know this because, in the next 58 days, I have to pull a gigantic rabbit out of a hat: to wit, a townhouse.  Perhaps I should explain.

My wife, Betty, is a superb horticulturalist and gardening lecturer.  She also dabbles in gardening as evidenced by our two acres of dazzling perennials, containers and specimen beds.  She knows garden design though she does not practice as a professional.  For the past five years, she has created exhibits for, first, the New England Spring Flower Show and, for the past two years, the Boston Flower & Garden Show.

A few weeks back, I was looking over her shoulder as she sketched the elements of a garden for the upcoming show, the theme of which is ‘First Impressions’.  Her problem wasn’t so much the garden as it was the backdrop.  The garden she was creating won’t be one of the lucky ones surrounded by other landscape displays.  Instead, it will back up to the ‘commercial’ part of the show – the vendors that pay the show’s bills.  She was thinking in terms of tall evergreens to block the view of the vendors so that people viewing the garden wouldn’t be distracted by someone hawking shovels or statuary.

My bright idea: add the facade of
a 20-foot-wide, two-story
townhouse to the rear of an
entry garden.

“Too back you can’t just put up a house in back of the garden,” I joked. “That would certainly block the view of the vendors.”

She kissed me.  Normally, this is a very good thing.  When she kisses me after she has been growling in frustration, bad things can follow.

To make a long story short, my job became to build a regulation-size, twenty-foot-wide, two-story townhouse.  Fortunately, the townhouse has to be only a foot deep.  Also fortunately, the ceiling of the Seaport World Trade Center is sixteen feet high so the townhouse I need to build is just a story and a half.  It will kind of disappear into the ceiling.  I hope.

I should also note that my budget for this house of very close to zero because the organization sponsoring the garden is a non-profit.

This is what I found at the warehouse
(no, that's not me in the photo)

Last week, I got very dirty crawling through a warehouse where various staging for the old New England Spring Flower Show is stored.  The first thing I found was a door in a frame.  Then, miracle of miracles, I found an 8’x8’ clapboard panel with a window in it.  Then I found another.  I also found a plethora of 4’x’8’ framed plywood panels.  I recognized one of the clapboard panels because I nearly got killed installing it at the 2007 show for another of Betty’s gardens.

Having these pieces of lumber is a far cry from having a townhouse façade, but it is a start.  It will take the services of a couple of very good carpenters (volunteers, of course, like me) to turn it into a Beacon Hill townhouse.

This weekend, Betty found a perfect, half-round granite doorstep for it, plus a heptacodium that will be the 420-square-foot garden’s centerpiece.  She is now working with greenhouses to get forced plant material sufficient to fill the garden to appear like it is mid-May in the middle of March.  She has the hard part of this assignment.

And all I have to do is make a townhouse appear.

Getting Wet for a Good Cause

I don’t know if it’s just me, but it seems that working around Paul Miskovsky is an invitation to get wet.  Very wet. 

You may remember that back in July, I helped Paul build an exhibit for the Newport Flower Show.  On the last day of the 'build', it rained so hard that I squished all the way home.  I eventually ended up with a cold that lasted two weeks.  But I digress.

Paul's original whiteboard sketch

Three months ago, I watched with fascination as Paul sketched on a whiteboard in a classroom at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in Wellesley.  He had just come from a non-descript parcel of land between the Society's main parking lot and its entry gate, where he had wielded two cans of orange spray-paint on the scraggly grass, pines and scrub oaks that were the principal occupants of the site. 

He was sketching out a new, 800-square-foot garden to serve as the entryway to the Society's Elm Bank complex and, as part of a weekly lecture series, was now soliciting ideas as to what this new garden ought to look like from the 40 or so people assembled .  He drew circles and ovals and reeled off the Latin names of plants as easily as if he were an emissary of the Holy Roman Empire.  The room full of people watched, alternately transfixed and shouting out plant names that Paul accepted or countered.

Two and a half months went by and Paul’s landscaping business on Cape Cod took front and center stage.  Yes, it mostly rained in Wellesley during August and September, but at least it was warm rain.  I circled tentative work dates on my calendar and the dates were wiped out because some kettle hole in Wellfleet or estate in Weston cried out for a transformation.

Paul Miskovsky at the
site of the new garden

Then, a month ago, Paul called and said he would be at Elm Bank with a back hoe and some rocks and could I stop by to help?  I did, and three massive rocks went into place.  Fifty cubic yards of premium topsoil quickly followed. 

Two weeks later, Paul again called and said he had some plants for the site.  A group of us – primarily Betty's Master Gardener pals - shoved and nudged a half-dozen massive specimen trees into place and planted 30 hydrangeas.  For many gardens, the work would have been deemed to be done.  For Paul, of course, it was just beginning.  Ten days later, a 36-foot box truck rolled up, this one crammed with two additional varieties of hydrangea, boxwood and forsythia, plus fifteen flats of Japanese forest grass.  This time, of course, it was pouring rain.

Some of the volunteers who helped
build the garden.  Double-click on
the inage to get a better sense of
the cultivars being used.

When it rains and the temperature is, say, 45 degrees, an army of volunteers can shrink to a handful.  In this case, the corps of workers consisted of three very dedicated Master Gardeners, Betty, and me, plus Mike Falzone, a member of Paul’s full-time crew.  In the course of four hours, we planted at least four dozen full-sized shrubs and three topiary trees, re-contoured the site and made it look attractive for an evening event.  Paul dug holes with a Bobcat, then pitched in to complete the plantings.  Having forgotten his rain slicker, Paul did his work wearing a pair of fetching, black trash bags.

The garden is still not finished.  There remains a slate walk to be laid and small shrubs to be integrated into the site.  But the vision created on a whiteboard in July has been turned into a reality.  Now, as people approach the gates of the Elm Bank gardens, they’ll have had a foretaste of what is to come.  It is a garden that will be rich in color and texture and one that has appeal twelve months of the year.  It won’t have the size of the 'name' gardens inside the Society's gates, but it will tell the visitor that there are more treasures inside. 

Learning From Lynden

I had the pleasure of hearing Lynden B. Miller give a talk a few weeks back.  If you live in New York City, you’ve likely heard of her.  If you know ‘public spaces’ design, you surely know her name.  If you don’t, and if you care about parks and open public spaces, you should make her acquaintance. 

Ms. Miller describes herself as a ‘painter and gardener’ and it is true that she trained as a painter and that she gardens.  But that’s akin to calling Édouard Manet a French painter.  It’s technically accurate but it barely scratches the surface.

This is the Conservatory Garden
in Central Park.  When I lived in
New York City in the 1970, the
garden looked nothing like this

Ms. Miller got her start in 1982 when she was asked by Elizabeth Rogers, the Administrator of Central Park, to ‘do something’ with a space in Central Park.  Today, we think of Central Park and we think, ‘magnificence’.  Thirty years ago, the park was just starting to come back from decades of neglect and much of the restoration work being done was at the southern end of the park where, frankly, all the wealthy donors lived.  Ms. Miller was asked to tackle the Conservatory Garden at Fifth Avenue and 105^th Street – well ‘above 96^th Street’ as they say in Manhattan. 

Ms. Miller knew the site well.  She remembers when the Conservatory Garden contained both a series of greenhouses and a formal garden.  The former was destroyed by Robert Moses, the latter fell into disrepair because of a succession of city decisions to stint on maintenance.  By the early 1980s, the once-elegant gardens had given way to graffiti, broken bottles, compacted lawns and overgrown flower beds.  People stayed away in droves.  Ms. Miller did more than just design a new garden.  She set about to raise private funds, hire qualified staff and organize a dedicated volunteer group of gardeners drawn from the neighborhood.  Even better, she has stayed with the garden ever since, guiding its development, raising an endowment for its long term care, and, making the space a gathering spot for the community.

Lynden Miller

I focus on that garden not just because it was her first ‘commission’, but because the garden became the cornerstone of Ms. Miller’s philosophy: everyone, rich and poor, will respect and love a beautiful place when it is well-maintained.  She also believes in encouraging people to sit down and enjoy themselves.  The revamped Conservatory Garden encouraged people to linger by providing ample seating spaces.

More commissions followed:  gardens for The Central Park Zoo, Bryant Park (with its hundreds of portable folding chairs that, contrary to everyone’s fears, don’t get stolen) , The New York Botanical Garden, Madison Square Park, and Wagner Park in Battery Park; waterfront gardens in Red Hook, Brooklyn, improvements to Union Square Park and the 97th Street Park Avenue Mall, renovation of the “Gateway to Harlem” Broadway Mall at 135th Street, Loeb Plaza for Hunter College, and the 67th Street Armory.

I wish I could find a 'before' photo
of the Stony Brook campus - which
resembled a set from some
post-apocalyptic film.  Here is
part of what Lynden Miller
accomplished

Her other project that caused gasps from the audience was her work at Stony Brook University, the Long Island campus of the State University of New York (SUNY).  Built in the 1960s, the campus embraced that decade’s ‘brutalist’ style of architecture: acres of raw concrete and windowless buildings that looked like bunkers.  It was once one of SUNY’s least desirable campuses. 

Since 2000, she has overseen the gradual transformation of the site, installing walkways, trees and large sweeps of colorful plantings to replace those vast stretches of concrete pavement which had make the center of the campus a barren and inhospitable place. Twenty thousand ground covers, ornamental grasses, perennials and shrubs were planted to soften and humanize this area. The result is nothing short of startling.

The thing I find most fascinating is that Ms. Miller focuses on New York.  She has wandered as far as Princeton but the great body of her work is in the five boroughs. I don’t see work in Dubai or Los Angeles. She may speak in Boston, but I don’t see a cadre of apprentices churning out plans for parks here (the apotheosis is Michael Van Valkenberg).  In her talk, she said she believes strongly that public open spaces with superior, well-maintained plantings can change city life.  She accurately and wisely acknowledges that well-planted public places (Bryant Park, for example) have a huge impact on the surrounding neighborhood, attracting visitors, reducing crime and raising real-estate values.

She is, in short, a treasure from whom we can learn a great deal.