Buffalo-Style Gardens. Sally Cunningham
the gardeners’ own stories that explain and add meaning to the gardens. Once you meet these people you’ll understand their gardens and you’ll feel it: Gardens are entwined intimately with their gardeners.
It’s about design: Some gardeners play with design elements. One changes the flow, the path through or around the garden, causing the visitors to look at it from a different angle. Another uses a disproportionate or misfit object (tree, shed, playhouse) that might be considered impossible to work with – and then makes it the most interesting thing in the garden. Others choose a unique piece of art and place it where it’s unseen at first, just around a corner, and then… There it is!…to the amazement or amusement of the unsuspecting visitor.
It’s about art and collections: Sometimes the garden or the gardeners have a great story that catapults the garden into our memory banks, like the wonderful “Mary’s Garden” of Jim and Annabelle. Other gardens reflect the interests or passions of the gardeners.
Many of the most-photographed gardens get the attention because of art and collections. The art and décor were chosen with love during the gardeners’ travels, or the items were made, re-purposed, or chosen because they were just right for that garden. They are all very personal.
Rich Groblewski’s unexpected Japanese-themed garden in Lancaster, in honor of a long-time pen pal of his youth.
Artists and Architects Left Big Footprints in Buffalo
Buffalo has deep roots in contemporary and classical art (The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The Burchfield Penney Art Center, Hallwalls, the Castellani Art Museum), and a dedicated arts community. Many true artists are Garden Walk Buffalo hosts, using the space to showcase their work, and others are crafters, collectors, or are simply uninhibited about what they display among the plants.
The architectural heritage in Buffalo is also deep and rich – sometimes challenging, sometimes presenting opportunities. The region contains many Frank Lloyd Wright and H. H. Richardson buildings, a plethora of two-centuries-old houses (from cottages to mansions), and the landscape architecture influence of Frederick Law Olmsted. Buffalo gardeners aren’t afraid to play with the structures that surround them (including the neighbors’ walls) or to borrow stylistic touches from our architectural forefathers.
It’s about featured plants: Finally, we will talk about the great plants used, sometimes unexpectedly, in Buffalo-style gardens. Some gardens are absolutely defined by their plant collections, and the way the gardeners show them – and they are among the most memorable and impressive gardens on tours anywhere. We’ll be looking in on Kathy and Mike Shadrack’s “Smug Creek Garden,” and Marcia Sully’s “Hidden Gardens of Eden” (above), both hosta gardens that are visited by hostaphiles from all over the U.S., Canada and Europe. Anthony and Barbara DiMino, grocery store owners in Lockport, New York, put their time and love into a garden with thousands of lilies as well as moss-covered terrariums. Other gardens feature succulents, or bonsai, or dwarf conifers. Or it could be just one amazing plant that earns the photograph.
So, what are we saying with these first gardens? There is no single way to approach a garden and create something that’s all yours – one that makes you happy every time you’re in it and has a magnetic certain something that draws people to it. It can be done through surprise, humor, drama, art, a story, or special plants or collections.
Come along with us as we visit many more Buffalo-style gardens that stand out among the rest, many of them rich in creativity without requiring a big budget. And we discover how the most memorable gardens manage to be memorable.
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GREAT LITTLE GARDENS AND HOW THEY GREW
(and some bigger ones that grew too)
The gardens we’re sharing are not typical of magazine-style garden designs. Among the several ways these gardens are originals is that most were never really designed. Instead, they evolved, along with their gardeners. Sometimes the gardeners had epiphanies, or crises that sparked changes, or personal growth that led to new garden style or plant choices. Often the gardeners just learned more as they went along.
In private gardens this story is not unusual – many gardeners start out one way and change course within a few years. But even professionally designed gardens don’t survive for long exactly as designed. First, that’s because plants grow and change; even weather patterns change. But even if the right plant were put in the right place throughout, and thoroughly tended, the garden would change because it’s in the hands of human gardeners! We gardeners grow. We get bored, impatient, or smarter (one hopes). We develop better taste. Or if we already had excellent taste, our preferences change. Certainly our lives change: Families grow or shrink, jobs flourish or diminish, we get stronger and have more free time, or we develop health problems or run out of time. Or we move. Our gardens change with us.
Here you’ll meet some gardeners, from Garden Walk Buffalo and beyond, whose creative self-expression formed their garden’s identities. These gardens are all sizes and in many settings, from in-town urban to wide-open spaces. One constant is the gardeners' creative spirit that isn't limited by the space available for expressing it.
We learned that invariably, a garden’s evolution is intermingled with the life of the gardener.
A before-and-after (2002/2018) of the Charlier garden.
Jim’s story: Tourism made me a gardener
I’m mostly the photographer in this book, and I’m also sharing my design insights and lots about gardening tourism. For me, gardening was an evolution – so slow I didn’t know it was happening. I’d never have presumed to write a gardening book, but somehow my small, in-town Buffalo garden went from ho-hum to humdinger – you’ll be seeing lots of photos.
I gave zero thought to gardening until I married Leslie and we bought a house. As a young guy in Binghamton, New York, I’d helped my grandad with his garden, but that was it. Now suddenly Leslie and I had a place to dine outside, grow a few vegetables, entertain, and experiment with plants and DIY projects – I’d found my bliss. Gardening became the hobby for which I’d always been looking. Previously, my wife said the only thing I collected was dust.
Then, we stumbled upon the first-ever Garden Walk Buffalo in 1995. It was free, and we could visit 29 neighborhood gardens and sneak peeks at what those people did. The next year I figured my garden was good enough to be on that tour, and there were no entry criteria, so why not? We enjoyed it: Who wouldn’t like to have a few hundred people come into your back yard and compliment you for two days?
But there’s nothing like company coming (by the hundreds) to kick a guy into action. After my garden’s big debut I wanted to outdo myself every year, so I started adding one garden feature per season. Sometimes it was big, like a deck, and some were small – like rerouting ancient grape vines from a chain link fence to grow over our deck. That was the first