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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
