Buffalo-Style Gardens. Sally Cunningham
with the Land: When the Site Directs You
As we asked gardeners about their breakthroughs and discoveries, a common thread was about the garden or the land “telling” the gardeners what it could be and what to do about it.
The property that captured its caretakers (and is very smug about it)
Once upon a time, a London policeman – a “Bobby” – retired from policing and became a very popular expert in hostas. He traveled across the ocean to tell everybody about his favorite plant, and he led them to see the great plants in gardens all over America.
Meanwhile, in the little village of East Aurora, New York, a nice lady gardener invited her friends in iris, daylily and hosta societies to hold meetings in her yard, especially when plant experts came to town – like that British hosta fellow. The Brit named Mike and the lady named Kathy met and sparks flew across the flower beds. Soon, they were traveling between England and America – to view hostas, ostensibly. They were two plant people in love.
But…where would the Bobby and the lady gardener live? They saw many fine homes on both sides of the Great Pond. Then a piece of land outside the little village of Hamburg, New York, called to them, and there would be no other. A creek ran under the house; a deck overlooked a fern-covered ravine; tall forest surrounded them in absolute stillness… Hostas spanning the shady hillside, Japanese maples down the creek banks – like they grow with the hostas in Asia – the babbling brook inspiring great books about gardens… They imagined these things.
They imagined these things, and most of of them came true. The land had a few surprises for them but they continue to work to help it be all that it can be. Like a genius child, it needs endless nurturing and stimulation on the way to its full potential. Mike says, “We have a very special personal garden that reflects us, and we hope it’s a credit to this piece of land!” Busloads and carloads of visitors can attest that it is.
They named it “Smug Creek Gardens” – and it is indeed very smug about capturing its caretakers.
Doing the next right thing
Christopher Carrie, “Outside Clyde,” Fines Creek, North Carolina
Christopher Carrie (outsideclyde.blogspot.com) refers to himself as “a long-time peasant gardener for the well-to-do.”
When it came to his own garden, he writes: “From the beginning I knew this garden had to be done in full collaboration with the land. I just kept doing the next right thing. Ten years later, the combination of creative energy and deep conversations with the land produced an adolescent garden that is indeed a living work of art.” Seen from a bird’s eye view, Chris said his large garden would resemble an abstract painting. “I used plants, stones, sculpture and the land itself like paint.”
Like many gardeners in this book, Christopher Carrie has learned the power of carefully chosen, often surprising, art (very Buffalo-style!). “My garden is known. It is not well known. I keep working on that. I do know it is the talk of two counties because of one particular roadside item. There is a red bicycle out there flying through the forest trees.”
In this garden the equation is: Lessons from the land, plus unleashed creativity, equals Ku’ulei ‘Aina (Hawaiian for “My Beloved Land”).
Christopher Carrie’s North Carolina garden is a masterful work of man with nature. With a palette of native plants and changing seasons, there are cultural hints of everything from Andy Goldsworthy to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Terroir in the Alaskan woods: Caretakers of the space
As newlyweds, Susan Gurley and Donald Brusehaber moved from Eden, New York, to Alaska in 1973 to find adventure and careers. They found five acres and home on the banks of the Eagle River surrounded by boreal wilderness, with mountains towering in the distance. Susan speaks of their land: “I feel that we are honored caretakers of this space; we have nurtured it into a place for celebrations and for peaceful connections to nature. Terroir, a word often used to describe environments for wine grapes, is the word that resonates for us – about a sense of place. It all comes together: the environmental factors (learning to live with this weather, short seasons, changing climate), the niches for certain gardens, the constant work to sustain the land’s fertility with composting, and the powerful setting of Alaskan wilderness.”
The specifics – where to grow vegetables, place niche flower gardens and sweeping landscape beds – came slowly as they listened to the land. The property showed them: They couldn’t grow vegetables the way they’d farmed in “the States,” so Don built a heated greenhouse; they adapted. The soil was compacted, telling them to truck in hundreds of wheelbarrows full of peat and to make compost. Susan’s struggles with rototilling the hard soil led her to a raised bed system… The land taught the gardeners.
“Creating gardens from a blank slate is a decades-long process, not about an initial vision or design,” Susan explains. “We progressed, as if guided, from one piece to the next.” For this elementary teacher with summers off and a gardening obsession inherited from her mother, and for Don, the construction engineer born into farming, it was a process. “We are the guardians but the land is the boss.”
Susan and Don Brusehaber’s Alaska garden often hosts Anchorage Botanical Garden events, and has been featured in Garden Design magazine.
Most of the gardens in the Buffalo-Style Gardens collection are urban and small, but some others you have met are also related to our story, my own large garden included. What do they have in common? It’s the way that their gardens grew out of deeply personal circumstances and evolution. There are no predictable gardens here, and none of them started from a pre-planned professional design. In each case, the gardeners have used individual life moments and changes to create their trademarks. In future chapters you’ll see more examples of gardeners’ personal stamps on specific elements of garden design.
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GREAT GARDEN DESIGN
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