Great gardens have much in common with other works of art—form, color, structure, light, space and an indefinable “something” that draws viewers in. Unlike other masterpieces, however, gardens are ephemeral. Any gardener can tell you what happens when you leave a landscape untended for even a month. Lines blur, thuggish plants grow large while less robust species languish. Left long enough, a garden can disappear all together.
In 1988, octogenarian gardener Ruth Bancroft feared that her magnificent California desert garden would suffer that fate. Salvation arrived in the form of a visit from financier and horticulturist Frank Cabot, who was so taken with the Bancroft landscape that he began pondering ways to preserve it. His wife suggested a conservancy and that idea took flight the following year when the Garden Conservancy was launched. The group’s large mission was defined by a short statement: “The Garden Conservancy saves and shares outstanding American gardens for the education and inspiration of the public.”
That inspiration now spills forth from the pages of a new book–Outstanding American Gardens: A Celebration—25 Years of the Garden Conservancy. Timed to coincide with the organization’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the gorgeously illustrated volume highlights two kinds of gardens. The first are those that the Conservancy has helped preserve and transform from private Edens to public gardens. The second are private gardens whose owners share them as part of the Conservancy’s annual Garden Open Days program.
The text is by author and horticulturist Page Dickey, whose own garden, Duck Hill in North Salem, New York, is featured in the book. The sumptuous illustrations are by Marion Brenner. Fittingly, the first pages of the book are devoted to pictures of the Bancroft garden, now open to the public, thanks to the work of the Conservancy. Backlit by the western sun, various cacti and succulents glow, making it easy to understand why the landscape took Cabot’s breath away over a quarter century ago.
The featured “Preservation Gardens” show the breadth of the Conservancy’s reach, including notable landscapes from Orting, Washington to Washington, Connecticut. Among the most unusual are the gardens on Alcatraz Island, a rocky outcropping in San Francisco Bay, which has been, at various times, a military base, a military prison and a civilian prison. Over the life of the institution, military families as well as prisoners have tended colorful, productive gardens, which fell into neglect when Alcatraz Prison was closed in 1963. The Conservancy helped restore the gardens, which are now open to the public.
Pearl Fryar’s Topiary Garden in Bishopville, South Carolina, is a living reminder of what can be accomplished by an “ordinary” individual blessed with extraordinary vision and imagination. The Fryar Topiary Garden, a residential property and former corn field, is a joyful showcase of shrubs sculpted into all manner of traditional and whimsical topiary forms. Many of those shrubs were “throw aways” from local retailers that Pearl Fryar, a former factory worker, clipped, sculpted and transformed into living works of art. The Garden Conservancy, in turn, has worked since 2006 to help transform Fryar’s masterpiece into a living public institution.
My own home state of New Jersey is represented by two gardens in the “Private Gardens, Open Days” section of the book: the garden of Andrea Filippone and “Bird Haven”, Janet Mavec and Wayne Nordberg’s garden. Both are located in the rolling hills of Hunterdon County.
The organically grown Filippone garden rises out of a former farm property. It is a mix of elements and styles defined by many varieties of boxwood, one of the owner’s favorite plants. The plethora of garden rooms includes a potager or ornamental kitchen garden, bordered in catmint—Nepeta—and allium cultivars.
Bird Haven is another former agricultural property where a disparate mix of buildings has been united by a garden designed by Spanish landscape architect Fernando Caruncho. Like Ms. Filippone, Bird Haven’s owners define spaces with boxwood and prize their walled potager. The birds that inspired the property’s name most likely compete to harvest the spoils of the orchard, which contains antique apple and peach varieties. The property is also home to an unusual Monastery Garden, where soft pink and lavender-hued plants predominate, along with frothy lady’s mantle.
Outstanding American Gardens—A Celebration is a beautifully written and produced book, but it is more than that. The forward by Frank Cabot’s son, Colin, and the Introduction by Ms. Dickey make clear that the “celebration” is also a call to arms. The Conservancy, which is the only organization dedicated solely to garden preservation, is much like a garden itself and requires constant tending. Already rooted in Cabot’s vision, it also needs to be borne aloft on the strong “wings” of ongoing financial and public support. In twenty-five years, the Conservancy has helped preserve one hundred significant gardens. Fueled mainly by volunteer labor, the group has also provided inspiration and education coast to coast by sponsoring the Garden Open Days. Fellowships, awarded annually to aspiring horticulture professionals, move that discipline forward, helping to ensure a flow of fresh, new talent.
The book is a visual feast that should make you want to run to the nearest Preservation or Open Days garden, followed immediately by a trip to your own large or small piece of paradise. To find out more about the Garden Conservancy and its work, go to http://www.gardenconservancy.org.