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.
two
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
