Of Gardens. Paula Deitz
beds across the turf from the rock gardens; and past the pink azaleas, holly hedges, and heathers to the bog. Surrounding these areas were stands of red and white spruce, planted in tight clusters as barriers to the severe winds, while others were allowed to grow freestanding to retain the spread of their “youthful outlines.” And twin Alberta spruce, one of her signature choices, stood as sentinels at the head of the paths leading to the bay. From the shore, this skyline appeared like “the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark,” which Maine novelist Sarah Orne Jewett described so memorably in The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896).
Within the gardens were certain Arts and Crafts style ornaments reflecting not so much indigenous crafts but the work of others like herself, in particular Eric Ellis Soderholtz, whose tastes were formed on European travels. Born in Sweden, Soderholtz was an architectural draftsman and photographer in Boston who had made a survey of ancient art and architecture during a Grand Tour of southern Europe. After settling near Bar Harbor in West Gouldsboro, he devised a method of fashioning classical oil jars and amphorae out of reinforced concrete that could withstand the harsh elements. Hand finished, sometimes on a wheel, with slight pigment and incised ornamentation, these dramatic containers still grace many gardens in the area. (Lunaform, a craft studio in Sullivan, Maine, carries on this technique and also reproduces Soderholtz's original designs.) Two of his oil jars were positioned on either side of the main pathway at Reef Point, and his birdbath in a bed of heather was the central feature of the lower garden. In addition to rustic benches placed strategically throughout the gardens for the views, there was one formal bench positioned under the eaves of the entryway. With multiple spindles turned on a lathe, its elaborate structure blended with the architecture of the house and its vine-covered walls. In reproduction, it is known as the Reef Point bench.
Although their lives were very different, Farrand created a seaside garden that can be seen in direct relation to the flower beds Celia Thaxter cultivated next to her porch on Appledore Island off the southern coast of Maine. (In Farrand's files is a note she once scribbled to herself about Thaxter's 1894 book, My Island Garden.) Farrand may have crisscrossed the country and traveled abroad to design gardens for clients on a grand scale, with walled enclosures and formal garden rooms linked by naturalized plantings to woodland and wilderness areas beyond. But at Reef Point, she did what she loved most by creating a Maine garden of apparent simplicity where families of plants laid out in drifts meshed with others in a studied asymmetry. In addition to designing and constantly rearranging the plantings, she planned every aspect of the daily life at Reef Point, preparing for the big day when the establishment would stand on its own. The truth is that the pinnacle reached at Reef Point during this period was its great moment.
The annual reports she presented to her board of directors are the behind-the-scenes companion narrative to the bulletins. They included horticultural developments, the titles of books acquired for the library, and lists of seeds received from botanic gardens around the world as well as of plants culled from wilderness areas such as Mount Katahdin in Maine. In them, she never failed to thank the Garlands, her secretary, Isabelle Stover, and her French personal maid and expert flower arranger, Clementine Walter, who greased the wheels of an enterprise that valued the perfection of the domestic arrangements as much as the gardens.
The influence of Beatrix Farrand's life is still fresh in Maine, where the younger generation in her time have become leaders in the community, one that is still divided in a friendly way between local residents and summer people. David Rockefeller, who was a child when Farrand designed his mother's garden in Seal Harbor, recalls her as “the epitome of a New England grande dame in a long dark dress and hat—tall, erect, austere, sure of herself, opinionated and frightening to most people.” And he remembers walking in her heather garden and how beautiful and completely unpretentious it was. The Rockefeller family still houses the four-wheeled buckboard carriage David's father, John D. Jr., drove through Acadia National Park with Farrand at his side. Beginning in the late 1920s, they made these excursions together to inspect the plantings and the design of the bridges along the fifty-seven miles of carriage roads that were his imaginative contribution to the park. Farrand responded to these outings with closely typed “Road Notes,” offering suggestions in her usual no-nonsense language, with the names of appropriate trees and plants—sweet fern, wild roses, sumac, goldenrod, and bush blueberry—listed along with directions for how and where to plant them: “On the south and west sides of the road opposite the view young spruce should be used, and later on, as pitch pine is available. The north slope of the hill could be gradually planted with these giving a splendid Chinese effect to this superb northern prospect. These pitch pine will never intrude on the view any more than they do on the Shore Drive where they add a great picturesqueness to the position (November 4, 1930).”
Throughout these notes, she urged Rockefeller “to vary the road planting in height and quality and type of material, as these varieties are usually shown in natural growth.” In a sense, like the eighteenth-century British landscape designer William Kent, Farrand leaped the fence of Reef Point and saw the whole landscape as a native garden. When her directions were not followed, she expressed displeasure, particularly when trees were planted in straight lines. Nevertheless she wrote to Rockefeller in 1933, “Again I want to thank you for the way in which you are so consistently upholding my judgments and helping with the ease of carrying on the work to which I look forward as one of the great pleasures of the Island days.” He, on the other hand, found pleasure in the results: “For the first time [I] could understand why you are so partial to wild cherries and pear trees. The blossoms certainly are lovely.”
Every six months, Farrand forwarded a detailed accounting of the number of drives and days in the field in addition to office consultations and stenography. With a few exceptions, the amount owed was always the same: “No charge.” Rockefeller, of course, was deeply appreciative and enjoyed their teamwork “in the public interest” for the “beautification of Acadia National Park.” “I do not know when I have spent an entire half day in so carefree and enjoyable a manner as last Sunday afternoon,” he wrote in May 1929 early on in their long road correspondence. “To feel that I could talk as frankly as I did about park matters, with the perfect assurance that nothing that was said would go further, added much to my satisfaction and sense of freedom in the talk.”
The collaboration was a close and dedicated one. Toward the end of the correspondence in 1941, and at the season's end, the two tried unsuccessfully to make a rendezvous for a final carriage ride up Day Mountain. Rockefeller responded with the courtly congeniality that characterized their rapport. “What ever happens to the world,” he wrote, “Day Mountain will be standing next summer and I much hope we can drive up it then.” Throughout their long association, however, neither abandoned a formality and reserve instinctive to them both. One August, Farrand wrote: “It was only with what I thought great self-control that I passed you the other day on your way homeward from an evidently brisk walk. I wanted to stop and say how do you do to you and to tell you what a pleasure it has been to work over the lodges and their surroundings [in the park].” Horticulturists on the island have observed what may still be traces of her handiwork in such selections as the American bittersweet (Celastrus scandens) around the bridges that serve as overpasses for the carriage roads, now being restored after years of neglect.
Involving though their work in Acadia was, their main project together, which entailed hundreds more letters written between 1926 and 1950, was the garden Farrand designed for Rockefeller's wife, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, in a spruce forest below The Eyrie, their hilltop house in Seal Harbor. One of Farrand's major designs, The Eyrie garden is still in family hands. Although Farrand worked directly with Abby Rockefeller, the correspondence confirming verbal arrangements was always with her husband. In 1921, the couple had traveled to China for the opening of the Peking Union Medical College, which was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. Culturally, the voyage was a galvanizing event in their life. Yellowing newspaper articles in a scrapbook at the Rockefeller Archive Center show the tiled pagoda-style roof of the college entrance, which confirms the influence of this architecture on the structures of the garden. Inside a pink stucco wall coped with yellow tiles from the Forbidden City, the contours and harmonies of mossy woodland settings for sculptures from the Far East are juxtaposed with a Maine interpretation of an English flower garden in brilliant seaside hues. Passing from cool green