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.