Great Gardening by Sally Cunningham

on September 12, 2014 - 12:01 AM

The word garden evokes many images. Almost universally the word produces positive responses, causing smiles or warm thoughts. But exactly what does the hearer envision as a garden? The answers may be as varied as gardeners themselves, with even broader definitions based on historical, cultural and national contexts.

I first became aware of two clearly different British and American meanings of the garden when I was reading my daughter a storybook written by a British author. In it, the childs beloved stuffed bunny was left out in the rain in the garden. What garden? our 5- and 45-year-old brains wondered. The illustration showed a yard with a swing set, bench and some landscaping but no garden. Bunny was on the grass!

Soon I had my own British friend who talked about his garden, and I knew: They mean the yard! Their garden is everything out there! But when an American says she has several gardens, she means she has some vegetable or flower beds in her yard.

In American usage today we may see the definition of gardens getting even blurrier: A Garden Walk Buffalo person with a densely packed yard, brimming with flowers, shrubs, garden art, koi pond and furnishings may well call the whole thing the garden British style merged with American urban.

On the other hand, an Orchard Park homeowner with a 2-acre lot may still call it his yard, refer to his landscape as the shrubs against the house and mention a garden out there. No wonder, when Im asked about my own garden Im linguistically flummoxed: I have some country acres kept as woods and fields and a big yard with some flower and shrub beds ... Its the best I can do.

Estate gardens

Captains of industry, land barons and wealthy families in America, Europe and beyond have chosen many kinds of gardens around their homes. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, formal estate gardens often reflected the cultures that most impressed those traveling Americans. Today we can tour those preserved or restored Italianate-, English- and French-style gardens, often overlaid with furnishings or design elements from Chinese or Japanese influences.

Wethersfield, in Amenia, N.Y., is described in a brochure as a 10-acre formal garden ... arranged in the classical style, like the Italian villas of the 17th century. One surprise for some of us visiting the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, N.Y., was the distance from the mansion to what many considered the real garden, a formal terraced garden with symmetrically spaced beds of roses, traditional perennials and bedding plants (annuals). The family referred to the grounds as a strolling garden, so the long paths and vistas en route to a gazebo or terrace for sitting were part of the point. The other motive: In an elegant lifestyle one did not wish to see the labor behind the scenes, whether laundry, cooking or gardening.

After the Civil War, rising fortunes (as in the Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Astor families) permitted millionaires to build country places with formal gardens, typically laid out in symmetrical patterns. Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island is a frequently visited example. From 1880 to about 1940, such gardens emerged in Newport, the Hudson River Valley, the Brandywine Valley near Philadelphia, in Southern states or wherever the wealthy chose to relax, play and celebrate their bounty.

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Great Gardening by Sally Cunningham