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BUFFALO’S GARDENS

A Living Laboratory

Through the ages, gardening methods and designs have changed with the tastes and needs of their times. So what is happening today? We – Sally and Jim – have observed and participated in the world of gardening for many years, tuned into the trends and important cultural shifts. And we’ve come to see that Buffalo-area gardeners have unintentionally created a “garden design laboratory” for our 21st century sensibilities and lifestyle.

This remarkable outdoor laboratory demonstrates that we need not be tied to the old ways of a demanding expanse of green lawn, raised beds, with the flowers and veggies out back, and the (often) hopeless-looking hellstrips at the curb. We can bring personal art pieces to the garden, even if they’re repurposed and definitely unconventional. We’re not marching to just one drummer anymore. But we’re not into chaos either, and we have busy lives. So this real-life laboratory is showing us smart, creative shortcuts, design solutions and ways of living the good life in all kinds of outdoor spaces.

Garden design choices: Extending the rules

If there were a simple formula for designing a magazine-worthy garden, life would be simple – for a gardener at least. Landscape architects and professional designers would go out of business. Horticulture courses and garden design books would become extinct. We would just pass out charts that instruct: (a) Choose these plants, (b) Put them together this way, and (c) Open the garden to show it off. It doesn’t work like that, however.

What does work? What are the Buffalo gardeners doing that’s causing all the admiring talk? We know there’s lots of creativity, but what makes them so special? After a lot of conversation, and overhearing thousands of visitors, we have concluded it is not one thing, but several – let’s call them qualities – that characterize the most impactful gardens.

Here are some of the ways that these gardens capture our imaginations. Just a sampler for now. We’ll dive deeper in the chapters that follow.

Surprises and Humor

We remember best when something unexpected pops up. Surprises stick in our brains, including images of memorable gardens. Unexpected plants in unconventional places can be one kind of surprise. Or whimsical choices of furniture, art, collections, or your style in presenting them. Sometimes it’s even your story or the garden’s story that captures attention. Here are three gardens that surprise people for entirely different reasons:

A Garden with a Story with a Twist

The garden of Annabelle Irey and Jim Locke

This garden, commonly called “Mary’s Garden,” has become an icon of Garden Walk Buffalo and has been photographed for several national magazines. Why? In part it’s the hardscape – the path and the archway. If you cover one eye to see the garden without the sign and the archway, what remains is an exuberant and colorful flower garden. Beautiful, yes, but not necessarily unforgettable. Sometimes the extra something is a simple archway or sign.

This garden has something else that’s even more unusual – a story that surprises. It starts with the sign, “Mary’s Garden,” which creates the expectations that the lady of the house is the inspiration for this garden or perhaps Mary is the gardener herself. But the story emerges: Visitors look for Mary and find out from the owners that Mary was actually Jim’s former wife, who is now deceased, for whom the garden was created during her extended illness. Annabelle, who tells you the story, is Jim’s second wife and partner in gardening. And…the touching twist: She agreed that it should continue to be called “Mary’s Garden,” a lovely homage from one gardener to another. About half the visitors call her Mary, but no matter. And if that isn’t sweet enough, for years their old Bassett hound, Cornelius, reigned from the fancy doghouse. Now everyone meets the friendly new pup, Thurman. These gardeners – and dog – are just folks you’d like to meet. And thousands of people on one July weekend every year do just that.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Jim: Ever think of naming your garden? Dragonfly Ranch? Rat’s Castle? Song ‘n’ Bird Gardens? Smug Creek? Squirrelhaven? Danger Garden? Bonsai Forest? If there’s one way to make your garden memorable it’s branding it with its own moniker. Find something unique about your garden, select a stage name, create a sign, and your garden comes to life in a whole new way. Unforgettable.

Annabelle and Jim’s garden is featured in many magazines and on tours because of great plants – the collections of dahlias and exotic annuals – and design. But it’s equally remembered for the lovely, surprising and touching story (and for the dogs, of course!)

The Irey/Locke garden, known to locals as “Mary’s Garden,” is formal in structure and casual in plantings – and fun to be in. There are horticultural surprises at every turn.

Humor and whimsy delight us when they appear in a garden. The whimsy could be the placement of objects, the use of unexpected materials, or – most often – the choices of garden “art.” Some people have to search high and low to find whimsical, smile-inducing objects to add to their gardens. Some people have those objects land on them – like bowling balls.

The Garden with the Bowling Balls

The garden of Ellen Goldstein and Mitch Flynn

Bowling balls? There is a lot more to this garden: tall Casa Blanca lilies and special ferns, unusual statuary and an elegant cement fountain gurgling in the center. But everyone mentions the bowling balls. Mitch Flynn, an advertising agency owner, unexpectedly came by some bowling balls and had a brainstorm… The garden needed some art, and bowling balls had special meaning for them: Mitch and Ellen’s first date was a bowling night. The multi-talented Mitch knew how to drill holes, and what followed was possibly the world’s most unusual totem pole. Ellen, a public relations professional, still seems to enjoy the retelling of that fortuitous bowling date. With the couple’s eye for design, bowling ball art has become classy – sort of – and it’s okay to laugh.

Once whimsy entered their hearts, these folks didn’t stop with their original objets d’art. They went on to solve a safety problem (low-hanging branches) with (what else?) rubber duckies. When you see them, you’re surprised: rubber duckies at the entrance to this architectural classic? But here, the ducks mean DUCK!… specifically under the low branches of an ancient lilac tree. Once you duck under them you are glad not to have bumped your head, and you emerge a little more light-hearted.

The garden of Ellen Goldstein and Mitch Flynn is mostly known as “The one with the bowling balls”!

LEND AN EAR

Sally: It’s worth listening to what people say about your garden, as it may be a clue to how you’ll be remembered. Do they mention your place as “the garden with the bowling balls… the place with the china teacups… where they had that mirror behind the pond… the garden with the blue barn?” If so, your identity is emerging! If you don’t like the descriptors you can make changes, but if you like what you hear – make the most of it!

The next garden is a Buffalo-style interpretation of garden rooms. Garden rooms can acquire unique identities based on several things. In the case of a small urban garden, the entire back yard – including the driveway leading to it – can become a stunning room. The furnishings you choose and how you put them together may be more memorable than the plants in the garden. Furnishings have impact. Take one of our favorite examples, a garden that’s first remembered for its furniture, second for the colorful plants – and finally, for something unexpected about the gardener…

A Garden Room Crammed with Coleus… and the gardener’s surprise

The garden of Joe Hopkins and Scott Dunlap

A vast collection of coleus, most in containers on the driveway, would make this urban garden impressive enough, but here it’s the furniture that has made this garden famous and featured in magazines, blogs and news articles. The garden – the whole back driveway and yard – looks and feels like a living room. You walk in the driveway, through the exquisite hand-painted gate (featuring purple coneflowers), and aim toward a destination that begs you to sit down and contemplate the coleus. Cushioned chairs and a rug encourage long visits and deep relaxation. You find lamps on the end tables, mirrors and posters on the walls – and typically the gardener comes out of the house and serves you cupcakes… It is a living room in every sense.

Still, there’s more to this garden. After the awe and head-shaking over the furniture and the over-the-top lush containers with lilies, coleus, licorice plants and bee-balm, Joe Hopkins loves to add a twist. “How do you like my color combinations in these pots?” he asks. People aren’t just being polite when they universally answer, “Beautiful, gorgeous, unforgettable…” And then Joe says, “Guess what – I’m colorblind!”

One of the most popular gardens on Garden Walk Buffalo (and you can see why here) has more plants in pots than it does in the earth.

The Element of Drama

If a garden faces the Hudson River, or has a mountain in the background – voila! – you have drama. Frame it. Feature it. Complement it. But if the garden is in a city or town, with neighbors and fences and sidewalks – then what? Drama can be created with a few calculated choices.

The Umbrellas of Hamburg

The garden of Linda Washut and Kathy Kelkenberg

This garden is featured on the Buzz Around Hamburg, a small-town garden walk with 30-some gardens that attracts repeat visitors year after year because the gardens are so charming and the people are so warm. Hamburg is not far from Buffalo. You could call it Buffalo-adjacent. Linda and Kathy’s beautiful garden is situated on a corner lot. Lots of great gardening is done here, like hundreds of other fine gardens. But this one is unforgettable because of the dramatic sense of the gardeners. It’s about the planters and perennials, but especially those umbrellas… Definitely Buffalo-style!

This garden starts at the street with a vibrant pollinator garden. It’s the only spot with full sun. Once inside the gate it’s mostly a shade garden, filled with hardy plants and hundreds of annuals, as well as a few tomatoes. All very nice, but perhaps this yard wouldn’t elicit exclamations like “Wow… Oh my… Look at this!” if Linda and Kathy didn’t know that a garden walk is a performance. So, before the people show up they add some drama and even decorate the stage.

The first dramatic touch: These gardeners plan and plant containers with huge tropical plants. (We’ll tell how you keep the plants all winter in a USDA Zone 5 region, in Chapter 5.) Then the gardeners place them strategically. In this garden a show-stopping planter with a towering banana or Colocasia greets you. And everyone takes that picture.

They set the tables: When guests arrive, the tables are laid out, practically insisting that you sit down. (It’s difficult not to look around eagerly for appetizers and wine, or morning coffee with croissants…)

Those umbrellas! Lots of gardens have a round table with an attached umbrella and some chairs, but here there are four, overlapping and touching each other. They make the space the most festive, inviting place ever for lingering. With special candles and lanterns, socializing can go on into the darkness.

The Kelkenberg/Washut Garden in Hamburg is defined by its umbrellas – a clever, inexpensive and creative way to define sitting areas in the garden.

Creativity Unbound

The garden of Sue Hough and Miro Sako

What do you get when an advertising art director marries a trained woodworker/carpenter? The ultimate DIYers, that’s what. Sue and Miro have a joyful garden of handcrafted projects, many of which focused around the life of their two young girls. You’ll find no big-box store garden art in this craft gallery of a garden.

Some of their projects are most likely a bit beyond most DIYers’ abilities, but the originality and sense of adventure with each project (like not knowing how the end result will turn out!) is something everyone can appreciate.

A unique treehouse

Problem: one single large tree dominates the yard. Solution: a colorful and charming tree house with a slide, rope swing, planter boxes, a vertical garden – all above a sandbox. It even has a ladybug-looking mailbox. Though the daughters are a bit too old for a treehouse now, it defines the backyard and is a visual treat for visitors. Ask anyone in Buffalo about the garden with the treehouse, and they’ll know exactly what house it is.

An extraordinary wall of wine bottles

A feature you’ll not find in any other garden, this colorful wall of wine bottles was an obsession for Miro to figure out how to make happen. After much experimentation (and the obligatory wine bottle emptying) he started with figuring out how best to drill into glass. He concocted a system of vertical cables onto which the wine bottles were strung. Under Sue’s artistic eye, they strung colorful bottles in random but purposeful positions on the cables.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a garden with more joy (and wine bottles) than the Hough/Sako garden. Gardener Sue Hough is an advertising art director and a past chairperson of Garden Walk Buffalo.

Uncommon accessories

Nearly every feature added to the garden was handmade, or made by people Sue and Miro know. A quirky peacock with wine bottle tail feathers, plant “ladders” for hanging baskets, tree stumps as planters, curvy window boxes on a fence, tall painted wooden flowers forming a lattice for climbing plants, and a stump cleverly forming a wine bottle tree (we’re sensing a theme here!).

Not everyone has the talents of Sue and Miro, but don’t let that stop you! Start with a small project you can do in a day or weekend – something that will give you some immediate gratification – and build from there. It’s the creative process that’s a thrill to experience. Dig in. Make something original. And do it big. Drama makes a garden memorable.

Many Ways to be Remembered

Incorporating some surprises, building in the whimsy, choosing unusual furnishings, adding dramatic effects: just a few of the ways talented gardeners have made their gardens special, Buffalo-style. We will be showing you several other paths toward the coveted comments… “Wow… I don’t believe it. Unforgettable!”

How have our Buffalo-style gardeners left their imprint on our visitors’ memories?

It’s about the gardeners themselves: Integral to many garden visits are the people who created the gardens – certainly true of the gardens you’ll encounter in these pages. It’s one thing to walk in and out of a well-designed garden; it’s another to hear Helen tell about her birdhouse collection on the side of the garage, and meet Carol and Tom (who explain the library ladder and tomatoes on the roof).

Creative gardeners Carol Siracuse and Tom Palamuso used a library ladder to make this rooftop vegetable garden possible.

You won’t forget talking with longtime gardeners like the Habermans (in their 80s and 90s) who still grow thousands of annuals from seed – and have for decades. And you’ll laugh at Peter Loomis’s chagrin, evident from his sign saying “This garden is tended by a sailor (this was his boat) turned reluctant gardener. Take pity on him!”

The Loomis garden is nautical but nice. Cindy is a former Garden Walk Buffalo president, Peter is still bitter about having to give up his boating days.

It’s 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.