• Gaiety Hollow: Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver

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~ A personal look at the ideas, inspiration, and hard work that go into the Lord & Schryver gardens.

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Author Archives: Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager

Changes are afoot at Gaiety Hollow

21 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in annual flowers, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Summer, Tours, Uncategorized, Vintage Photos

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annuals, brick pathways, brick restoration, flowers, Gaiety Hollow, historic preservation, Oregon, Summer, Volunteering

This weekend are the last tours of the 2017 season. We have a garden tour at Deepwood Museum & Gardens at 9am. It is followed by a tour of the gardens at Gaiety Hollow at 10:30am. This is your last opportunity to see the Flower Garden at Gaiety Hollow before big changes take place!

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Come Monday morning, I will be in the garden digging (almost) everything up. The annuals will go to the great compost pile in the sky and the perennials and roses will find new homes with our volunteers. By Wednesday, the Flower Garden will look like a blank slate.

Wednesday evening, we are welcoming a crew of youth from the LDS church in south Salem. They will pull up the bricks from the paths in the Flower Garden, clean them, and stack them. I am so grateful to have their offer of help!

The following week, our contractor will come in with his crew and work will commence on the rehabilitation of the brick pathways. If you have been to Gaiety Hollow this season, you know that the paths are uneven, water pools in various sections, and the edging brick is spawling in places or leaning right and left.

September in the Flower Garden

When you come back to the gardens next spring, this will no longer be the case! We cannot wait to have the paths fixed so that they look as they did when Edith and Elizabeth gardened at Gaiety Hollow. The bricks will be clean, the path lines sharp and crisp, the pedestal at the center of the garden reconstructed, and grass will be reintroduced in two sections (including the path to the Pergola).

Cat and pedestal
Cat and pedestal
Edith, 1968
Edith, 1968

It is a very exciting time for the Lord & Schryver Conservancy. Many thanks to our grant partners, the Oregon Cultural Trust and the State Historic Preservation Office, to our donors, and to our volunteers, for making this project possible.

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Historic roses at Gaiety Hollow

03 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Restoration, Roses, Vintage Photos

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Tags

archives, flowers, historic photos, historic preservation, Oregon, Restoration, Roses

Earlier this week, I had an epiphany as I looked at historic plans in our organization archives. Years ago, volunteers had Edith and Elizabeth’s hand-drawn plans for the gardens at Gaiety Hollow digitized. I have copies on my computer and refer to them often while doing research and planning. There is a sketch that I have often skipped over because I did not see it as particularly relevant.
ND plan with shrubs coll96_lordschpapers_0020

I had overlooked this drawing because it features a Vitex and Lonicera hedges that were never planted.

However, this week, I had a realization that the information written in the four inner flower beds might be very useful. We know from photographs that Edith and Elizabeth planted these beds with roses–roses that have long since disappeared.

Undated image
Yellow roses and purple pansies. 1960
Yellow roses and purple pansies. 1960

So why could this sketch not tell me which roses Edith and Elizabeth preferred?

With the power of the internet, it didn’t take me long to generate a complete list of the roses on this plan, their type, their colors, and their year of introduction. And they match with our historic photographs.

  • ‘Butterfly’ (aka ‘Golden Butterfly’). Apricot yellow. 1920
  • ‘Sunburst’. Yellow-orange. 1911
  • ‘Constance.’ Golden yellow. 1915
  • ‘Los Angeles.’ Salmon. 1916
  • ‘Augusta Victoria’ (aka ‘Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria’). White, yellow center. 1911
  • ‘Mrs. Aaron Ward.’ Yellow blend. 1907
  • ‘Imperial Potentate.’ Carmine pink. 1921
  • ‘Lady Ashtown.’ Pink. 1904
  • ‘Duchess of Wellington.’ Yellow. 1909
  • ‘Mme. Edouard Herriot.’ Coral-red. 1912
  • ‘Golden Ophelia.’ Medium yellow. 1918
  • Mabel Morse. Golden yellow. 1922

It seems like an easy step forward for us to replant exactly what Edith and Elizabeth specified on this drawing. But historic preservation is never easy! We have no records that indicate these exact roses were ever installed. At the same time, we know that Edith and Elizabeth were critical of their gardens and flowers, frequently tossing out plants that did not meet their high standards. Perhaps these roses were planted in 1932 and then went into the compost heap within the next few years. We may never know. In addition, sourcing old roses can be difficult, as roses frequently drop out of trade as new cultivars are introduced. We might not be able to find these roses for purchase in the USA.

970 nd_roses with brick walk and arbor

Roses in the Flower Garden. Date unknown.

Nevertheless, I am excited about my discovery! The colors match our collection of historic photographs. I will use this list of roses to inform the type and color palette of the roses that I choose to plant in the coming year.

IMG_20170701_091828_027

‘Gruss an Coburg’ purchased by L&S for Deepwood

Many, many thanks to our volunteers who spent countless hours in the University of Oregon archives finding these scraps of information and paving the way for the restoration of the gardens.

Photographs and plans courtesy of the Lord & Schryver architectural records, Coll 098, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon.

 

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August anticipation

16 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in annual flowers, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Summer, Uncategorized

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annuals, brick pathways, brick restoration, Dahlias, Eclipse, Englewood Park, flowers, Gaiety Hollow, historic preservation, Open Garden, Summer, West Allee

August is a month of activity at Gaiety Hollow. A month of welcoming visitors and a month of preparations and anticipation for major projects.

On the 5th, we welcomed our neighbors in Gaiety Hill to an evening in the garden. A highlight of the event was Chinese lanterns collected by by volunteer Valerie McIntosh hung throughout the garden. We hope to do more evening events in the future.

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20170805_211154

August 11th was the first Englewood Forest Festival. Englewood Park has strong ties to Lord & Schryver. Elizabeth Lord served on the first parks commission in 1936. She was instrumental in the design of the park and advocated for the preservation of the Oregon white oak stand which remains today. Ruth Roberts, a long-time volunteer with the Lord & Schryver Conservancy and perhaps our resident L&S historian, was interviewed on Willamette Wakeup on KMUZ. You can listen to the interview by following this link. Click on the “play” button for August 10th 8am show. Unfortunately, you have to listen to news before the interview comes up, but Ruth is well worth the wait! Many thanks to Ruth for giving such an articulate and insightful interview.

This past weekend was an Open Garden and this coming Saturday, to capitalize on eclipse viewers, we are open to the public again from 10:30-1:30pm.

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20170815_085820_4 oclock
20170815_090037_dahlia

We are also deep into the planning stages of major projects that will begin to take place next month. In late September, after the gardens have closed to the public for the season, work will begin on the repair of the brick walks through the parterre Flower Garden. The bricks will be taken up, sorted and cleaned, the path edges re-aligned and the grade raised, and then the bricks will be re-installed. Today, Joy Sears from the State Historic Preservation Office stopped by to help us choose replacement bricks. This is a very exciting project and will vastly enhance the look and feel of the Flower Garden.

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Also later this season, we are improving the drainage in the West Allee. You might remember seeing the West Allee blocked off to visitors last winter and into this spring. If you stepped into the Allee, you were met by standing water and mud. We hope that putting in a drain and wells will solve this problem and improve the visitor experience.

If you haven’t been to Gaiety Hollow yet this season, don’t delay! We are open August 19, September 10 and 23rd. Check the website for more information.

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Summer in blazing glory

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in annual flowers, Drying Garden, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Summer

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annuals, August, Dahlias, Eclipse, flowers, Grapes, historic preservation, pergola, Phlox, Summer

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced temperatures over 102 degrees. It’s not something I had on my “bucket list”. The Gaiety Hollow gardens seem to be taking it well, thanks to drip irrigation and some early morning sprinklers in the Flower Garden. Although we humans are wilting in the mid-day heat, the annual displays keep growing and filling the borders with color.

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Elizabeth and Edith’s grape vine is loaded with clusters of fruit this season. The hanging bunches of grapes give a distinctly southern European feel to the Pergola seating area. One has to wonder if they chose the grape after being inspired by gardens in France and Spain.

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The late summer flowers are beginning to show off. Elizabeth and Edith loved phlox for their old fashioned charm and lovely scent. A few stems cut and brought inside perfume and entire room.

phlox

Dahlias, Verbena, jasmine tobacco, snapdragons, petunias, zinnias, and a rogue Queen Anne’s lace that I didn’t have the heart to pull, are filling up the garden with buckets of flowers. The honey scent of alyssum wafts through the Drying Garden.

Dahlia
Dahlia
Verbena bonariensis
Verbena bonariensis
Petunias, ageratum, zinnias
Petunias, ageratum, zinnias
Queen Anne's lace
Queen Anne’s lace

We are planning to have the Gaiety Hollow gardens open for visitors the Saturday before the Eclipse. We hope to introduce Lord & Schryver’s garden and legacy to new guests while they are whiling away time in Salem before the Big Event. If you have friends or family in town, please bring them to the garden!

Eclipse Open Garden

 

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Summer in the garden

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in annual flowers, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Restoration, Summer, Uncategorized

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awards, flowers, historic preservation, July, Nicotiana, Open Garden, Oregon Heritage

It’s hard to believe that it is already July!

20170705_082210

Nicotiana alata

This coming weekend, we are excited to welcome Salem Sketchers to the Gaiety Hollow for a morning of sketching the gardens. Artists will leave some of their Gaiety Hollow inspired work for us to display during our Open Garden. Please join us from 1-4pm, Sunday, July 9th.

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We are excited to announce that the Lord & Schryver Conservancy received a large grant from Oregon Heritage that will partially fund the rehabilitation of the brick pathways in the Flower Garden at Gaiety Hollow. The Conservancy was one of just 16 projects to receive funding this year. The brick paths will be repaired this fall after the gardens have closed for the season. This project will allow us to re-use the old bricks and restore the original look and feel of the Flower Garden.

Many thanks to our board chair, Bobbie Dolp, for her hard work in procuring the grant and to the citizens of Oregon for making this program possible.

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GardenTime, part 2

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Summer, Uncategorized

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Tags

annuals, flowers, GardenTime, historic preservation, June

A week ago today, GardenTime.tv stopped in for a quick interview with Bobbie and me. They allowed us to plug our Sunday Open Garden and–thanks to the show airing on Saturday morning–we welcomed more visitors to the garden than expected.

If you would like to watch the clip, here it is:

 

Disclaimer: I fumbled and got dates wrong! We are rehabilitating the gardens to the “period of significance” from 1932-1969, the years in which Edith and Elizabeth lived in the house and operated their firm.

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Garden Time!

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in annual flowers, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Summer

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Tags

alyssum, annuals, Campanula, Campanula medium, flowers, fox glove, Garden Time, June, Oregon, Zinnias

This morning, Bobbie and I had the pleasure of being interviewed by William from Garden Time, a television show based out of the Portland region. We should be on this Saturday! You can see his photos from this morning on his Facebook page.

20170606_084429

It is wonderful to have more people taking notice of the Conservancy and what we are doing to rehabilitate that gardens at Gaiety Hollow and open them to the public.

The gardens are changing every day. Lilies are in bud. Roses are blooming. The alyssum fills the air with its honey fragrance. You can almost watch the zinnias and petunias grow. Canterbury bells–one of Elizabeth’s favorite plants for summer–are blooming white, pink, or blue, along the Flower Walk.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

(Please note that this is a slideshow and better viewed by watching on the blog website rather than in an email.)

Come join us on Sunday afternoon for our June Open Garden. 1-4pm. Enjoy the gardens at your own pace and feel free to ask questions of our volunteers stationed throughout the garden. All are welcome.

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The gardens at Deepwood

01 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in Deepwood, Garden, landscape architecture, Lord & Schryver, Restoration, Spring

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flowers, gardens, historic preservation, House, June, Spring, Volunteering

Even though this blog is named for Lord & Schryver’s home garden, I want to take this week to look at the gardens at Deepwood Museum & Gardens.

20170531_082013

The gardens at Deepwood were one of Lord & Schryver’s earliest commissions. Alice Brown hired the firm in 1929 to help her create gardens spaces around her Victorian Era house. The house was built in 1894 and was considered one of the most beautiful and impressive in Salem at the time. However, it was built on a rise and the basement exposed. The surrounding landscape was not designed in tandem with the building’s architect.

20170518_085322_1

Leaping forward to 1929, five years after Alice and Clifford Brown purchased the property, Alice decided that she needed help in designing the gardens around her home. Lord & Schryver, with their newly opened firm located within walking distance, made perfect sense. The gardens at Deepwood were designed and created over many years. In fact, the Scroll Garden was not created until 1936-37. The house and landscape were a challenge for L&S because they preferred to work with the architect to integrate the house and gardens. Although the sum of the gardens does not fit L&S’s standard design elements, the individual gardens are classic Lord & Schryver.

The Scroll Garden

In the early 1980s, after the Deepwood estate had been purchased by the City of Salem, a group of volunteers came together to rejuvenate the gardens. Deepwood was the only publicly owned Lord & Schryver designed garden and provided an opportunity to beautify a community asset. Over time, an intrepid group of enthusiasts–including a few of the original volunteer gardeners–met to study Lord & Schryver and formed what is now the Lord & Schryver Conservancy. The gardens today exhibit L&S’s design principles, educate the public about their pioneering landscape designs, and provide a place of beauty and respite.

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C. glomerata at Deepwood
C. glomerata at Deepwood
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Today, volunteer gardeners still care for the historic gardens at Deepwood every Thursday morning, 9-noon. The gardens are inside the iconic green fence and open to the public every day of the week, free of charge, 5am until midnight. We hope that you visit and enjoy the many years of hard work and love that has renewed the gardens.

Megan
Megan
Lysa
Lysa
Donna
Donna
David
David

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Gardens–and trees!–in bloom

25 Thursday May 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in Deepwood, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Tours, trees, Uncategorized

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Deepwood, Deepwood Gardens, gardens, hawthorn, May, trees

The Tea House garden at Deepwood Museum & Gardens is already putting on a beautiful show. Poppies, iris, roses, foxglove, allium, and many more flowers were in bloom this afternoon. Most of the summer annuals have been planted and are ready to flower. The heat earlier this week made many of the plants grow quickly.

Foxglove
Foxglove
Iris
Iris
Rose
Rose
Poppy
Poppy
Allium
Allium

An exciting bit of news for the historic garden nerds among us:

A few years ago, the much loved hawthorn tree next to the Tea House was removed.  In searching through records, volunteers discovered that Lord & Schryver purchased a white hawthorn for Deepwood in 1932.  They were perplexed as the tree blooming by the Tea House had a pink double flower. They contacted nurseries and searched online to find a replacement but there appeared to be none available in the US.

When the tree was removed, however, two shoots coming up from the roots were saved. One was left at Deepwood–to hopefully thrive and replace the historic tree–and one was taken to Gaiety Hollow to serve as a back-up . The volunteers waited to see what the young hawthorns would turn out to be. Would they come true to the historic tree? Or was the old tree grafted and the shoots would be from the root stock?

Well, this week the volunteers got a beautiful surprise. The young trees both bloomed masses of fluffy white double flowers–matching Lord & Schryver’s records–and then faded to pink–just as our volunteers remembered.

20170524_133800

Not the most beautiful photo, but it’s double and pink!

As photos were shared by email and text, you might have heard a few cheers echoing across the Valley.

Unfortunately, the intense heat made the hawthorn flowers fade and disappear all too quickly. But, the gardens at Deepwood are full of flowers and more than enough reason to visit. There will be a tour of the gardens this Saturday at 9am for those interested in hearing more stories about their creation and rehabilitation.

A second tour will take place at Gaiety Hollow at 10:30. The old hawthorns at the front gate are in full bloom and simply covered in clusters of white flowers. It is no wonder why Lord and Schryver chose to plant these trees with a view from their bedrooms and studio!

Hawthorn
Hawthorn
Looking out the front door
Looking out the front door
View from Elizabeth's bedroom
View from Elizabeth’s bedroom

The annual display in the Flower Garden is also taking off, with campanula, roses, peonies, petunias, ageratum, alyssum, and daisies all blooming together. Come for a visit!

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Annual flower displays

16 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by Lord & Schryver Curator/Garden Manager in Deepwood, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Spring, spring annuals, Uncategorized

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Tags

annuals, gardens, May, seeds, Spring

One of my favorite parts of caring for the gardens at Gaiety Hollow and at Deepwood Museum & Gardens is designing the annual flowers displays. What could be more fun than choosing flowers for two different gardens?

I start by considering which plants we know Lord and Schyver purchased for the gardens (documented in purchase records, photos, or journals). I think about how much room we have in the gardens,  what are the current growing conditions (sun, shade, water needs, etc), and how textures and colors will work together. I make lists and plans and then hit the local nurseries. That’s the fun part.

When the local nurseries don’t have the plants I am looking for or they don’t have the right color, it’s time to get creative. Or maybe I should wait a couple days to see if what I want comes in on the next truck? It’s always a risk.

Heliotrope
Heliotrope
Argyranthemum
Argyranthemum
Pink Canterbury Bell
Pink Canterbury Bell
Vanilla marigold
Vanilla marigold
Petunia
Petunia
Joe the Cat at Godfrey Nursery
Joe the Cat at Godfrey Nursery

 

I’ve started from seed a few plants that I cannot find locally. They don’t look like much right now, but my imagination tells me that they will be beautiful this summer.

Verbena
Verbena
Nicotiana
Nicotiana

Last week, our Thursday and Friday volunteers planted all the annuals I had purchased for Deepwood and Gaiety Hollow. Dare I tell them that I bought more plants today? It’s so exciting to see the little plants in the ground. I’m a terribly impatient gardener, however, and find myself staring at them and willing them to grow faster.

20170516_135014

All plant information goes in an Excel spreadsheet for record-keeping

I hope that you visit and re-visit the Gaiety Hollow and Deepwood gardens throughout the season to enjoy the flowers and to see the changes taking place.

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