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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 house. Then we moved to our second house, this time on Lancaster Avenue, where we have spent 17 years as Garden Walk Buffalo host gardeners. Thousands of people see my annual projects: the pear tree espaliers, the copper fountain, the mosaic floor from found tiles surrounding a mirrored patio, the boxwood knot garden, and the Harry Potter garden (for our daughter, Margaux, who grew beyond it way too quickly). And the shed – I must say, a fairly famous shed about which I hear no end of remarks.

Among so many learning moments, my most valuable learning – the aha! – was seeing how gardens are more than collections of pretty plants.

A beautiful flower can move a person, a beautiful garden can move a neighborhood, but a garden tour can re-define a city! (To hear more about garden tourism, and how it may be transformative in your own town: Chapter 12.)

So the Garden Walk made me a gardener. My wife and I have the perfect garden (for us) that we love to share, I’ve written a garden blog since 2009, visited gardens large and small around the world, headed up the country’s largest garden tour, and I get to speak about the value of gardening (from tourism dollars to civic pride). Now I’m a partner in this gardening book!

Gardening changed me. I like to think Grandad would be proud.

Challenges (aka problems) Sparked Change

While Jim was spurred into ingenious gardening projects by admiring visitors, other Buffalo city gardeners made transformations out of necessity. Several faced looming factors beyond soil and pest management, including neighbors and their own quirks.

Hiding behind the cottage

Ellie Dorritie is one of the most memorable gardeners in Buffalo, and a main reason that the Cottage District is crammed with crowds during Garden Walk Buffalo. She is no shy kitten – a lifelong activist in fact – and she greets motor coach tours and neighborhood passersby with equal humor and aplomb. There was a moment she needed to retreat, however…

“When I moved in years ago, I found I had a neighbor who could look directly down into my yard from his apartment windows. I quickly realized that he had mental health issues and was “set off” into angry shouting by seeing me moving about outside. I needed a screen for my back/side yard that blocked his sight line. That’s what got me going on creating a place with trees and shrubs even though there was clearly no place for them. The neighbor moved away in time, but that sad episode was what spurred me to start my new garden.”

Ellie’s home is about 1100 square feet on a lot that is 25 feet wide and 75 feet deep. These cottages were all built around 1870, the neighborhood designed to meet the housing need of skilled laborers in the ironworks, breweries, shipbuilding, and other factories along the Erie Canal and downtown Buffalo. They are architecturally darling, and the entire neighborhood feels like a land of dollhouses – but one thing the cottages don’t offer is good soil and enough of it for gardening. As Ellie tells it:

“The second thing that helped form my garden: There was a huge tumble-down garage that filled my teeny back/side yard when I moved in, but with no way to get a car to it. The garage became the destination for hiding everything that I couldn’t make myself get rid of – ensuring that my poor orphaned children would speak my name unkindly as they spent day after day cleaning it out years from then.

“So I ripped down the garage, and then had all that concrete emptiness to fill. And the third thing, which I NEVER admit, is that the space, once garageless, was SO ugly and SO impossible, that I was hopelessly, irretrievably challenged: I just had to do the very hardest, most unlikely and far-fetched thing with it that I could possibly do – create the complete opposite of its original state.”

Ellie built up from cement, grew trees in huge containers, and struggled with compacted, polluted and dead soil. She calls it a “balcony garden” solution, although there is no balcony. Design-wise, it’s done the same way a balcony or terrace garden would be planted and planned, with nothing planted in the soil.

And now look at it! Part of that garden is still hiding behind the cottage, and every summer thousands of people go single file back there to peek – all because a few problems needed solving.

Ellie Dorritie’s cottage on Buffalo’s Little Summer Street.

Problem? The gardener is colorblind

The dramatic and colorful garden of Joe Hopkins and Scott Dunlap on Sixteenth Street draws as many as 2000 visitors each day of Garden Walk Buffalo. Scott explains the benefits of what many would call a problem for most gardeners: “I think the real story is that Joe has such a bad color deficiency. It makes him a bit fearless when it comes to his color combinations. So Joe sees and weighs textures, values and hues more than most people. He creates what looks appealing to him.”

As a result, the garden is like none other, as magazine covers and garden blogs attest. One of its lessons: There’s more to plant pairings than their flower and leaf colors. Pattern and texture can be at least as effective for dramatic planters and garden combinations. And trust your own senses, however imperfect they might be. (Nobody sees colors the same anyway.) Anybody can follow traditions and put blues and yellows together – but it took a different vision to create pots like these!

Joe Hopkins’ colorful garden in Buffalo’s Cottage District.

And another lesson: Especially when it comes to coleus, more is better.

After the trees came down

In 2006 a major ice and wind storm (called The October Surprise Storm) took down one-third of the tree canopy of Buffalo, many of them planted by Frederick Law Olmsted well over a century ago. Trees fell, landscapes changed, and some people despaired. Some saved their trees with the help of professional arborists. Others found sunlight in their yards for the first time so that certain plants flourished like never before, and gardeners were free to reimagine their design palette.

Two maples trees, planted around 1900, had long graced and dominated a charming back yard on Norwood Avenue, home of Arlan Peters and Dominic DiFillippo. Arlan wrote, “This changed in 2006 when half of one of the trees came down in the storm. Suddenly there was more light and we could use so many more plants than before. The little bird house in the tree survived the storm, and the squirrels use it regularly.”

The storm’s aftermath set Arlan and Dom on a serious DIY streak. They turned a cross section of the biggest fallen limb into a porch coffee table in their elegant 1890 home. It’s a table that tells a story.

Arlan added: “We learned that it’s wise to let Nature help make decisions for us, rather than try to impose our will on Nature. We also feel that your garden is home to many birds and other animals, too. They don’t regard you as the sole owner of the property.”

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 bed over there wider…” Buffalo-style intensity isn’t restricted to small spaces.

Collaborating 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.