Of Gardens. Paula Deitz
Finally, to begin what she called their “new life under other skies and with wider opportunities for use,” she selected the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley. The College of Environmental Design Documents Collection is located in Wurster Hall, the headquarters of the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Today, the life in this building is extremely active and exciting, with a constant parade of student projects and exhibitions pinned to the lobby walls. Here, in an educational institution where young people address environmental issues, the heart of Reef Point beats on.
After she sold Reef Point, Charles K. Savage, a member of Farrand's board, came forward with an imaginative and ambitious solution for the future not of the gardens per se but of the rare plant collections, which he considered the finest in Maine. Savage was the owner of the Asticou Inn in Northeast Harbor. He was a special person in an unusual position. Deprived of a college education by the early death of his father, who was innkeeper before him, he sought every opportunity to educate himself in art, music, and literature. His aesthetic interests and ambitions were recognized by the intellectuals among the summer residents, who lent him books and invited him to cultural events. Finally, he developed a talent for landscape design by reading widely in the field and becoming knowledgeable in all its aspects.
In a paper simply titled “The Moving of Reef Point Plant Material to Asticou,” Savage proposed to document and then transport the Reef Point collection of azaleas, rhododendrons, laurels, and heathers, along with other plant materials, across the island to a site around a reflecting pond across the road from the Asticou Inn. Noting that “many features of the natural scenery of Mount Desert have similarities to the Japanese, particularly in the parts of the island where bold ledges, rocks and pitch pines prevail,” he was inspired to create a stroll garden in the spirit of the famous water garden at Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, which had “the same low stone slab bridge, mown lawns to the water's edge, azaleas and pines.” This proposal was made to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who paid the greatest tribute to Beatrix Farrand, his old friend and adviser, by supporting this project with an initial $5,000 to purchase the plants and with additional funds during the next few years to create the Asticou Azalea Garden and enhance the terraces and gardens at Thuya Lodge. Savage was already involved in developing the Thuya property above the Asticou Inn. This had been the home, library, and garden of the Boston landscape architect Joseph Henry Curtis, who had died in 1928.
Charles Savage and his sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary Ann, made many trips together to Reef Point with a book of paint samples and colored pencils to list the azaleas and record their colors with a color chip or pencil mark. In one letter to Rockefeller he reported, “A great deal of my thought has been given to the arrangement of the trees and shrubs in this garden—mass, line and color, as well as the progression of azalea bloom—with the hope that the effect from the road as people pass by may be, (I hope), an outstanding one.” Lewis Garland chauffeured Farrand over in the dark blue Dodge every two weeks or so to view the progress of the garden, and she would get out of the car, remove her shawl, and stand to talk with Savage for awhile.
Even the Alberta spruce were brought to the new homes. At Thuya, they have retained their natural form, while at Asticou, one has been saved by expert pruning in the Japanese style. Many of the perennials were also planted in the Thuya garden, so that together the two places have become the successors to Reef Point in an extraordinary feat of plant preservation. In early spring, when the azaleas are in bloom, the paths in the Asticou Azalea Garden wind through clouds of pastel pinks muted by melancholy mists from the sea. But Asticou is equally beautiful in summer, with its cool sand garden inspired by Ryoan-ji, also in Kyoto, and its subtle range of greens, and in autumn with its brilliant leaf colors.
Farrand's gardens also continued in a more direct way. When the main cottage at Reef Point was dismantled (her old friend and executor, Judge Edwin R. Smith, lives on in the Gardener's Cottage), Robert Patterson incorporated entire sections of its interior into a new cottage he designed for her adjoining the farmhouse at the Garland family farm on the main road near Salisbury Cove, where Lewis and Amy Magdalene Garland had retired. The team then stayed together, for Clementine Walter lived with Farrand in her house. The charming white clapboard cottage with peaked roofs had three major rooms—two bedrooms with a sitting room between them—that faced the back, and the tripartite rear facade reflected this arrangement. Each of the three rooms had French doors that opened onto its own section of the garden terrace. Outside the bedrooms, perennials from Reef Point were planted in rectangular beds with annuals around the edges, and heather mixed with lavender thrived along a serpentine path leading from a millstone by the sitting room door. The gardening continued, with a subdued palette of pink, lavender, and gray outside Farrand's window, and brighter colors—red, yellow, and orange—outside Clementine Walter's. The balustrade from the Reef Point vegetable garden with carved oak leaves formed an elegant barrier between the garden and the wild cherries and fields beyond.
Farrand brought all of her favorites from Reef Point, including the Hydrangea petiolaris, which thrives today more than ever, covering the whole back of the barn. And her beloved single roses are crammed in wherever possible. Donald Smith remembers well his visits to her at Garland Farm, where she surrounded herself, just as she did at Reef Point, with myriad vases each holding a single rose. Even her local dressmaker, Mary H. Barron, continued to serve her at Garland Farm, although there was no more need for dresses like the one she made for Farrand's sojourn to Boston in the 1930s to take tea with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. “The Scotch tweeds she brought with her each summer for suits,” Barron recollected, “were so rough the briar burrs were still in them.” Most of her suits were in a mixture of black, white, and gray, although there was one exceptional soft purple tweed, and all of the blouses matched the jacket linings and were made with sleeves full enough so that when she pointed, the fabric would not fall back and reveal a bare arm. In later years, she was never without her distinctive black ribbon choker.
When Beatrix Farrand died on February 27, 1959, her service, by her own request, was attended only by Robert Patterson and the small loyal band at Garland Farm. Her ashes were scattered, like her husband's. But the garden at Garland Farm, her only truly private garden, has survived. The Goff family, who lived there between 1970 and 1993, were meticulous in overseeing it. Helena E. Goff, who was president first of the Bar Harbor Garden Club, and later of the Garden Club Federation of Maine, Inc., took on the mantle of responsibility to maintain Farrand's last garden, with occasional visits from Amy Garland. When the house was sold after the death of his parents, Jerome I. Goff became guardian of Farrand's last remaining papers in the house, including her treasured collection of seed packets from botanic gardens and plant societies around the world. The current resident of the cottage, Virginia Dudley Eveland, has engaged two local women landscape gardeners to maintain the gardens in pristine condition, including the fenced-in rock garden in front with its profusion of ginger and other Far Eastern-style plantings. Although the Garland Farm garden is small, a review of the plant labels indicates that all the important ones are there—a microcosm of the much larger world Beatrix Farrand inhabited.
The memory of Reef Point Gardens as it was, though, is guaranteed only by the written record. Publishing the bulletins as a collection is tantamount to re-creating in depth the multifaceted endeavor of Reef Point, which was supported by a devoted staff whose standard of excellence gave her joy. Read together, they constitute a descriptive account that both restores the gardens in their visual form to the mind's eye and summarizes the knowledge and experience of a lifetime.
Beatrix Farrand lived by a Latin motto from Psalm 119 inscribed first in the hallway at Reef Point and later at her Garland Farm cottage: Intellectum da mihi et vivam (Give me understanding, and I shall live). Her own intellect is at the center of the bulletins' texts, and her goal was simply to impart knowledge that would increase the reader's appreciation of gardens and natural landscapes. “The added happiness to life given by an interest in outdoor beauty and art has a very distinct bearing on a community,” she wrote in her 1939 prospectus for Reef Point. There is also in these essays an echo of a frequent expression found in her letters from Maine: “At last I have reached home again…” For within the pages of the bulletins, the gates to Reef Point Gardens are always open.
Introduction, The Bulletins of Reef Point Gardens, The Island Foundation, Bar Harbor, Maine (Sagapress,