Volunteer Appreciation!

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, landscape architecture, Lord & Schryver, Spring, Uncategorized

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"Documenting the Cultural Landscapes of Women", April, Gaiety Hollow, garden, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, Restoration, spring garden

I came in the back gate today for the event, and a quick walk through this garden makes you appreciate anew the power of commitment, focus and pure love of place.

This garden has been maintained and renovated and cared for thoroughly for years by volunteers. Just this year we have been joined by garden curator Lindsey Kerr, the first salaried position. Lindsey quickly saw the volunteers were key and she has intuitively networked with everybody…gardeners, carpenters, artists and photographers, archivists…the large team of people whose interest in the work of Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver has made this project go forward for two decades. Lindsey wasn’t with us today, but I snuck up to her office (stopping on the landing for a quick look in to Lord and Schryver’s office)

for a couple of the views she sees everyday…

From up here I saw the clematis on the newly-completed pergola renovation just bursting into bloom (as planned by L&S)…here’s Lindsey’s photo of last week and then how it looked today…

We were offered refreshments,

and a look at some of the drawings of Lord and Schryver on the walls in the public rooms…(I liked this one which was Edith Schryver’s senior thesis project at the Lowthrope School)

and then to stroll the garden, returning to the house to tell what was our favorite spot in the garden…

Today all these volunteers were appreciated in the best way…each of us was handed a thank you note or two and asked to tell what we do for the garden and the conservancy, and in the story-telling there was a grace and a humor and a sense of commitment that seems rare in these days.

The Board master-minded a surprise gift for Board Chair Bobbie Dolp who really has worked full time doing everything from grant-writing to weeding…her favorite vintage photo of the house…(with a drawing by me of a cherry original to the garden)…she liked it…

…and before I forget I rounded the corner of the garage today to see the crab apple planted last fall in full bloom…

Volunteers we appreciate you!!! Thank you for this work.

A Wet Spring…

18 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Bill Noble, Drying Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Spring, spring annuals

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Bill Noble, boxwood, brick pathways, Gaiety Hollow, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, Lord & Schryver Conservancy, pruning boxwood hedges, spring garden

I was in the garden today…dodging raindrops on the way into a meeting…and I reflected on how beautiful this garden is…even on the very dreariest of wet spring days…

I noted some boxwood trimming had begun…

the pergola construction was well underway…

making us glad that this structure will be there providing shade next summer…like it did last summer…and for many summers to come…

the rain has helped the new lawn in the drying garden flourish…

and once inside…the fire was going and Bobbie was welcoming Bill Noble to the meeting.

Bill is here in Oregon lecturing on the Cornish Colony in New Hampshire. His lecture in Salem is this coming Sunday (March 19th) at 2:00 in the Dye House at the Willamette Heritage Center. I KNOW you won’t want to miss this one. Bill formerly was with the Garden Conservancy and now works as a consultant to many famous gardens, including our own. He is a knowledgeable and lively person, pictured like this for publicity purposes…

and here are my meeting notes…

but today we had a little fun…

See you Sunday!

Bulb Planting Day

21 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver

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bulb planting, November in the garden, volunteer appreciation

Chilly, faint sun, a decent day to plant bulbs in the garden, to work on the fence… and the crew arrived…

This week Board President Bobbie Dolp made soup for these intrepid volunteers and it was GOOD! This group of volunteers comes every Friday to do the important routine work that a garden like this requires.

and the Lord and Schryver Conservancy is thankful for the volunteer and expert help…

Happy Thanksgiving from the garden!!

November News…

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Pruning

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boxwood, Gaiety Hollow, garden, garden design, Garden in winter, Historic Gardens, Historic House and Garden, Lord & Schryver, pruning, pruning boxwood hedges

We entered the garden through the back gate today, late in the afternoon, and there was a meeting going on so the lights were all on and the house looked inviting…

A walk through Gaiety Hollow this blustery afternoon revealed that MUCH work has been done in my absence…volunteers have finished trimming all the boxwood and it looks very good, even on a dark, wet and dreary day…

Elwood’s Tree Service has done some professional trimming (best done by somebody nimble on the top of a ladder)

and the holly hedge is amazing…

There has been lots of planting…two white lilacs…

a crab apple…

and a beautifully shaped Japanese maple near the house…

a small holly near the back porch…

always more to do though…foundation plantings…

and then the wear and tear of time and weather always brings new projects…

but in spite of the wind and rain, this garden always makes me happy…and now beginning to feel festive…!

The last of May…

30 Saturday May 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized

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Bill Noble, Gaiety Hollow, garden, Historic Gardens, KMUZ, Lord & Schryver Conservancy

May was a busy time for Gaiety Hollow and the Lord and Schryver Conservancy. The laurel hedges on the north side were pruned even lower with lots of the work done by Jay and Ann…

The Conservancy had a 3-day work session to continue on with the strategic plan that will carry the Conservancy and the garden to the next phase of ownership and management of the site…the goal here is sustainability. The L&S Board, the garden committee, and the advisory group met at the house to start the discussion…

and were soon joined by Bill Noble (here with Marilyn Kingery and Bobbie Dolp

Bill is the former Director of Preservation with the National Garden Conservancy, and has worked with L&S since day one. It was Bill who affirmed that the L&S garden at Gaiety Hollow was a garden and a legacy well worth preserving and bringing into the public domain. And Bill worked with the assembled group for three intensive days. Thank you Bill Noble for believing in this garden and this story…and for inspiring us to get the property into the public domain. A small miracle!

And tonight, on a dusk walk through the garden, I felt the privilege of being involved in this endeavor. Come join us…we need you!

NEWS BULLETIN…on Thursday June 4, at 12:00 noon, Board president Bobbie Dolp and Landscape designer Gretchen Carnaby will be heard on Salem History Matter on KMUZ…88.5 on your radio dial. (If you somehow miss it, you can get it off the web site the following week under the Archives Section.)

On we go into June!

An Exciting Week…and a Garden Party!!

08 Friday May 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Vintage Photos

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Gaiety Hollow, garden, gates, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, Lord & Schryver Conservancy, pruning

Gaiety Hollow was a busy place this week…both the house and the garden. George Crandall’s beautifully crafted gate (built from the original L&S design) was installed this morning, symbolic of the huge progress the Conservancy has made in this last year at Gaiety Hollow.

George Crandall crafted the new gate and David Lichter did all the research turning up many historic photos including these (please excuse the bad “screen shot” images)…here’s a drawing of the gate Elizabeth/Edith did on a table cloth back in the day…

The house in 1934 with a gate which was the original one…

and in the garden, the mulch arrived…

and in the house, the reprints of some of the many original drawings now in the collection of the Knight Library at the University of Oregon arrived and were hung in the living room and dining room…adding a wonderful resonance to the rooms…(and keep in mind here, this is NOT a house museum but it a working space devoted to gardens)

This was Schryver’s thesis project at the Lowthorpe School in 1923, an imagined garden called Wynndie-Lea…

and Thursday night we all trekked to Portland for a delightful party honoring the work of Lord and Schryver in an L&S garden of the 1930’s. The garden has been cared for beautifully for 30 years by Thayer and Jon Willis, though was originally designed for Mary and Gerald Beebe in 1932. L&S Board member Marilyn Kingery asked the Willises to open their garden so that the many Portland people who have L&S gardens, or garden remnants, could come see, enjoy and get solid information about Lord and Schryver and their work. Marilyn gave thoughtful and touching remarks about the L&S garden she once enjoyed, and Landscape architect Steven Koch talked about the interest and importance of the design work of the team. (Koch now owns the Wallace Kay Huntington house near Champoeg…Landscape architect Huntington was mentored by his life long friends Lord and Schryver and worked with them several times)

But, of course the real star was the beautiful garden with allees, views, focal points and plants of particular interest…this garden has it all…and Steven Koch’s remark about the L&S tendency to “compression” was immediately apparent on entering the house and looking through to the garden and the exceptional crabtree allee…OLD but very small crabtrees, boxwood and Yew hedges, nothing else…

and the view back toward the house…

and now you are free to roam the garden…(psst..this brick feature is not a shed…it’s gate to the side yard…)

through the gate to the parterre garden…

and the espaliered pear…

By this morning though, back in Salem, our intrepid Board president Bobbie Dolp was hard at work pruning the overgrown laurel hedges on the back alley…with help from Jay Raney…

and Ann…who I have often photographed quietly working away…

The Lord and Schryver Conservancy is so VERY grateful for all the hard work and thought and devotion that the many volunteers put into furthering the legacy of Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver and their gardens. Thank you Thayer and Jon Willis, Marilyn Kingery, Ruth and Don Roberts, David Lichter, Ross Sutherland, Brandy O’Bannon, Bobbie Dolp and Gretchen Carnaby, Valerie McIntosh, George Crandall, Woody Dukes, the Raneys, and many many more. This is good work. Come join us.

The New Front Gate!

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized

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Gaiety Hollow, gates, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver

I had a moment alone in the garden this morning…it was blooming…

and while I was waiting for David and George to arrive with the new gate, I found this well-worn plan for the new sprinkler/drip system on the garage floor…

But let’s do some gate recap. Last week I saw the old gate…

and these (to me) mysterious “new” gate posts…(“how are they going to put a wooden gate on these?,” I thought…)

But today I found out when David and George arrived with these ingenious and beautifully crafted wooden posts engineered to slip over the metal ones…

The gate had to go back in the shop today for some final adjustments and some paint, but you can see how beautiful it will be!! Amazing skilled volunteers to the rescue.

Spring in the House and Garden!!

07 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized

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brick pathways, Etahn Allen, Gaiety Hollow, Garden in winter, Lord & Schryver, Lord & Schryver Conservancy, NW Rugs, Spencer's Antiques, spring garden

While the rest of the country has been suffering a severe winter, here in the Pacific Northwest we have been happily in the “spring-time” mood for a month or so, brought on by sunshine and warm temperatures. Gaiety Hollow is coming back to life and beautifully so…I was in the garden very early Tuesday morning, all alone, and it was lovely…even though a tiny bit frosty…

Friday, though, I was back to check-in with the cadre of volunteers that keep this place looking good. I wonder if even our most committed readers realize that this beautiful garden would not have been saved, and would not be thriving, without the continued and total commitment of people who love the place and believe in the mission. Of course they don’t want to be mentioned…but sometimes I can sneak a photo or two…

This week they added forget-me-not and pansies to the tulips…”place holders” in the perennial beds for the time being…

And inside the house things are looking good. Many many thanks to neighbor Marian Milligan who recently donated these two little art pieces that she purchased back in the 1980’s from the estate sale at the house…they are the only things we have that are original to the house…(anybody else out there have something they bought from that sale???? Donations happily accepted…)

The intention of the conservancy is NOT to run the house as a house museum, but to have it be a working place, a place for meetings, seminars, etc. But it is nice to have a few civilizing touches and many thanks this week to Ethan Allen, NW rugs and Spencer’s Antigues for keeping our recent purchases well within budget. An alabaster lamp, a new rug, and the little graceful game table that now warm the entry of the house are nice touches…

The garden sparkles outside the windows…calling us back out…

Once outside we notice the terrific laminated garden plan that gardeners can use and mark on with erasable markers…

a final look around…

and we’re off…stay tuned for the coming story of recreating the front gate…Happy Gardening!!

Spring is Near!

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized

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Gaiety Hollow, Historic Gardens, spring garden, Verbena

The early spring things are popping up at Gaiety Hollow this week……outside things were green in the warm sunshine…a perfect afternoon to be in the garden…

and inside the archives committee was having fun (l. to r. Ruth Roberts, Bobbie Dolp, Valerie McIntosh, Gayle Meaders…missing from this photo were Ross Sutherland and David Lichter)

Inside the new chairs and tables have arrived, so watch the website for the rental information…the house will be a wonderful place for a variety of community meetings and events…

The garden from inside looking out was beckoning,

so off I went…into the sunny day.

The Winter Garden

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver

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camellias, daphne, ecto-parasite, Gaiety Hollow, Historic House and Garden, Lord & Schryver, Oregon Winter Garden

Yesterday was a bright sunny January day in the garden…

Sharon Rose and I arrived for an Archive Committee meeting…

and since she’s a plant biologist she explained the ectoparasite mistletoe in the white oak while we waited for the meeting to begin…(not harmful, for the most part…)