Buffalo-Style Gardens. Sally Cunningham
Arlan Peters and Dom DiFillippo’s damaged maple was an opportunity to create a one-of-a-kind coffee table for their front porch!
Marcia’s “succulent stump” creates miniature landscapes in which you can lose yourself.
Seeing the potential in a stump
Another gardener took advantage of a felled tree most creatively, and not one visitor leaves this garden without this memory: At their Eden, New York, home and garden called “The Hidden Gardens of Eden,” Marcia and David Sully were dismayed to lose a giant maple in a windstorm. “Deep shade was instantly transformed into all-day sun,” Marcia recalls. “From the remains of that tree trunk and numerous surface roots we carved a special area for tropical succulents. We lined it with flat rocks to absorb the heat from the sun, and added soil specifically blended for succulents. We planted succulents and soon a ‘waterfall of succulents’ appears to flow down the side of the stump and spread out into the surrounding bed.” (Read more about the “traveling succulents” and the hosta displays in “The Hidden Gardens of Eden” in Chapter 10.)
Bringing in the sunshine
Changes in a house can result in changes to the garden, from style to light to how we live in the space. Cindy Loomis, who lives in the famous Cottage District, wrote: “This doesn’t sound like a garden story, but it really is: Our kitchen was too dark, and it was awkward moving in and out of the narrow door, especially when groups of people started coming to see our garden. So we added French doors leading onto the deck, and suddenly both the house and garden merged, becoming one large space.” Reminiscent of the Frank Lloyd Wright style in which the outside and inside are connected, Cindy and Peter Loomis now have a large garden room that is part of the house. Like many Buffalo gardeners, it’s the room they live in for half the year. “Adding more pots and hanging baskets made the whole area delightful for sitting and dining al fresco. The French doors made all the difference.”
The Loomis garden has been on Garden Walk for more than 20 years!
The Gardens Changed as the Gardeners Grew
When we asked gardeners how their garden styles developed, we heard more stories about gardens developing in response to weather events, practical problems, and the demands of the site. But the most common reports were that gardens evolved as the gardeners’ lives and families changed, or they developed a new gardening expertise or passion. Personal changes or new learning made all the difference.
Sally’s story: my companion garden went full circle
In the late 1990s, my own garden in East Aurora (in the country thirty miles south of Buffalo) became a book: Great Garden Companions (Rodale Books, 1998) – and it couldn’t have been more personal. My child was ten. I had put all my energy into motherhood and making an organic garden (there were vegetarians in the family) with 4000 square feet of vegetables interplanted with flowers and herbs. I knew organic gardening was the right way, and I was intrigued with beneficial insects. It all led to the book.
Meanwhile I’d become a Master Gardener and then a Cooperative Extension educator. The perennials movement was coming of age. I worked in a garden center and became a CNLP (Certified Nursery & Landscape Professional). My property sprouted large perennial and shrub beds, where I learned what plants survived the animals that shared my land, and what plants worked well and served the entire natural community.
A garden is kinetic art, constantly changing over time – maturing along with its gardener.
My land and garden was, and is, my learning laboratory. It has never been a show garden. It’s the garden of a nurturer, a collector – and always a student.
Full circle! The garden and I were first about companion gardening to attract beneficial insects and to do no harm. I grew to understand the larger picture and the focus broadened: What’s crucial is eco-friendly landscaping, habitat protection, and native plant gardening – and it’s all the same thing. From a bio-diverse vegetable garden I’d expanded my loving concerns to include and support the entire eco-system, from the life in the soil to the animals on land, in the water, and flying overhead.
The teaching garden taught the teacher (writer) and the teacher’s direction formed the garden. What a wonderful partnership it’s been.
This I believe: We can all have healthy flowers and edibles using eco-friendly, organic practices. Biodiversity is the key. Patience and kindness count. Respect, revere, and garden in harmony with all the creatures – birds, snakes, insects, chipmunks, frogs, toads, deer, butterflies and all the rest. Our earth, our properties, and our spirits will be better for it.
“The plants took charge!” (says the obsessive gardener)
Penny McDowell has country property but hadn’t intended it to be what’s now called “Penny’s Park” (a huge Open Garden in East Aurora, New York). She was a Master Gardener volunteer with Cornell Cooperative Extension and became a landscaper. When we saw the massive acres she tends, we (along with tour bus groups) ask: “How did all this happen?”
She replied, “The gardens just seemed to grow. As a garden professional, I brought my work home. I couldn’t throw anything out. Plants that didn’t do well in a customer’s garden, or nobody wanted, just had to be planted. Then the plants asked to be divided and I learned to root more to fill in the new beds that somehow kept popping up.
“Finally, my husband and I had to name the expanding areas: the Sun and Moon gardens in the front yard, the Throw-away Bed in the side yard, the Herb Bed, the “S” Bed out back, a grass bed, and a grass wall. It just kind of happened.” Now hundreds of people tour her property every week for five weeks of Open Garden Days, all because those plants just had to be planted.
When guests exclaim over the magnitude of the project, Penny tells them, with her bright smile: “I have OCD: Over-Cultivating Desire!”
STYLE COMES IN ALL SIZES
Sally: Buffalo gardens became such tourism attractions that I began to take visitors to see larger gardens with the same spirit – individual creativity and over-the-top zeal. When I took a busload to Penny’s place, the people kept asking, “Who does this? Who mows it? Who mulches and weeds and edges and makes those beds?” Penny kept answering, “I do it myself. I weed it, I edge it, I’m making that