14 Wednesday May 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized
Tags
awards, capital campaign, Gaiety Hollow, garden, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver Conservancy, Oregon Community Foundation
The good news here is that the Oregon Community Foundation has contributed $25,000 toward our capital campaign. Thank you OCF!!!
05 Monday May 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized
Tags
Aegopodium, boxwood, brick pathways, Gaiety Hollow, garden, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, Lord & Schryver Conservancy, weeding, white oak
Did you know that this beautiful garden is almost totally maintained with volunteer labor? Every Friday morning from 9:00 to noon a small group of very hard-working volunteers does the “dirty work”…the weeding, the pruning, the sweeping and raking…and we need help. I might just say that if you love to work in a beautiful garden, if you have skills or if you want to develop skills, if you like the idea of contributing to a fascinating historic resource in your community… consider joining this merry band. Just showing up to take some photos I’ve learned a thing or two from this group. Think about it…WE NEED YOU.
So here’s what they were up to this week plus a report on some of the ongoing projects I’ve been reporting on.
One project this week was work on the bricks which need cleaning and re-sanding…
pruning…weeding…
the big problem is the Aegopodium…it’s everywhere…
The boxwood is beginning to regrow…!
and Woody has built a very ingenious tool cupboard in his work area…
The new Oak Tree has some leaves!
See you Friday morning…PLEASE!!
19 Saturday Apr 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver
It was an Oregon day in the garden…chilly and misty…but it didn’t stop the Oregon kids from hunting for eggs! The party was a thank-you for the kids and grand kids of generous donors to the garden, and the welcome balloons marked the gate…
We got there a little early to capture the preparations from chicks to baskets to treats…all was ready…
Ready or not…
Here they come!
and EVERYBODY was taking pictures…
the garden was beautiful of course…
and then it was time to enjoy the spoils of the hunt…
Wishing you all a lovely family weekend from the Lord and Schryver Conservancy! Thanks donors!!
13 Sunday Apr 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver
Tags
Last evening was a FUN evening in the garden showing off the newly redone rooms, and the garden of course…Board member Susan Miller and neighbor Amy Chayfetz provided the music and it was wonderful…
and of course, Martinis from Alcyone Cafe and Caterers…
Polka dots!
Elizabeth Lord arrived early…channeled by Gretchen Carnaby… here with Board member Joyce Zook…
and it was a lovely early evening in the house and garden!
Happy to be here!
07 Monday Apr 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized
Tags
"Documenting the Cultural Landscapes of Women", boxwood, Gaiety Hollow, garden, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, pruning boxwood hedges
In the garden today, amazed at the pruning, the open lightness of everything…thought you might like to see the progress…!
Before…
After…
Before:
After…
Before…
After…
Before….
A beautiful place to be on a spring morning…
Consider joining us Saturday, April 12, 2014, 5:30 to 7:00 pm, for Music and Martinis! Come see the refurbished interior, enjoy appetizers and drinks by Alcyone Cafe, and contribute $25 per person to this most amazing effort. Reservations and tickets available on line at http://www.lord-schryverconservancy.org/…see you Saturday!
19 Wednesday Mar 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Uncategorized
The public sidewalk in front of Gaiety Hollow was in rough shape, mostly due to tree roots heaving the pavement upwards. The morning of my last visit the City of Salem crew had demolished the old sidewalk, and it was all captured on film by arborist Woody Dukes. Woody said that the old sidewalk was poured directly onto the soil, allowing the tree roots to grow under the concrete and eventually cause the sidewalk to buckle. First they broke up and removed all the old concrete,
then they removed offending roots (and here Woody says we’ll just have to wait and see if the trees can survive…)
then they built the forms for the new sidewalk, giving the tree roots a little extra space…and put down gravel under where the new concrete will be poured…
Today the city crew poured the new sidewalk and it looks pretty good…let’s hope the trees can survive…
(I’m not sure HOW Woody got this next shot…but it’s clear the new sidewalk will be good looking!)
15 Saturday Mar 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver
Tags
boxwood, camellias, Gaiety Hollow, garden, garden design, Historic Gardens, house remodel, Lord & Schryver, Lord & Schryver Conservancy, pruning boxwood hedges, white oak
When I got to the garden today the crew was just finishing up the Friday morning work party…trying to rid the garden of “invasives”…a thankless task…
and I checked the boxwoods…the severe pruning has begun…
but you can see from this view of the unpruned on the left, recently pruned on the right, that this will be the right thing to do…
and then the camellias are all in bloom…
…a quick check of the new tree…
and then I headed inside where the renovations are almost complete. The former living room has become the meeting room…
the dining rooms views remain the best in the house…
and upstairs, the room over the garage that was Lord and Schryver’s office will become the “library”/”archive” room…
and the carpet has been removed from the stairs…
A quick fond view…
and I was off. Next time: the removal of the front sidewalk…will the trees live??
01 Saturday Mar 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver
Tags
Elwood, Gaiety Hollow, garden, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver Conservancy, stump grinding, stump removal, tree planting, white oak
The last photos have rolled in this evening showing the oak in situ, the magical machine that grinds stump by remote control, and the Townsend’s warbler doing a good imitation of a hummingbird.
After we left the intrepid team worked on and on (THANK YOU ADAM!!!) and the tree is in place. It went like this…
And earlier Gretchen was telling me of the miraculous stump grinder from Elwood that works remotely…the guy hardly even needs boots…
It was a long day for our intrepid crew…a day that proved above all else that FOCUS and PERSEVERENCE are part of the L&S story. Congratulations Gretchen, David, Woody, Joyce, ADAM….hooray!
and here are Woody’s photos of that Townsend’s warbler pretending to be a hummingbird.
28 Friday Feb 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized
Tags
camellias, Gaiety Hollow, garden, Garden in winter, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, pruning, pruning boxwood hedges, pruning camellias, snow damage, tree planting, white oak
Gaiety Hollow is an old garden, as you know. The lovely small hedges and decorative trees have become huge, so the problem of scale is now on the agenda…big time! The problem becomes how to strike a balance between the original intent when the garden was planted, and the fact of maturity in an historic garden. It took Darin 12 hours to prune the massively overgrown hedges at the front of the house. He saved some sections for infill and when we got there today Gretchen Carnaby, David Lichter and Joyce Zook were hard at work…take a look…
He didn’t prune the inside of the hedges…Gretchen said next year or the year after for that…when the street-side has filled out…
but the BIG news for today was the arrival and planting of the new white oak to replace the fallen giant, the donation of John Miller. Adam volunteered to work on digging the chips from the old oak out of the dirt left in the hole. Any chips of the old tree will rob nitrogen from the new tree and retard healthy growth…
David and Joyce jumped in to help, along with arborist Woody Dukes assessing the chip-to-dirt ratio… (it looked a little like a needle in a haystack…)
COFFEE BREAK!
(I DIDN’T get a shot of the Townsend’s Warbler with it’s nose in the camellia)
Woody pointed out the snow damage in the camellias…
and worse yet, the squirrel damage. The squirrels are killing off the tops of various camellias by girdling the trees to eat the bark. Look just above Woody’s finger and you can see where the bark has been gnawed off…
just below the stripped trunk is a strong shoot in healthy bark, so in due course Woody will remove the now yellowed and dying top and the new shoot will fill in.
Gretchen pointed out to me one of the next projects…an espaliered camellia that is very overgrown, and is going to be massively pruned…here it is today, with Gretchen’s note that it has a strong interior structure…so stay tuned for the results…
On our way out we checked the new little white oak, waiting to be planted…
A lot of activity for the sunny and bright last day of February!
24 Monday Feb 2014
Posted in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver
Gaiety Hollow neighbor Susan Miller sent along these images of snow in the garden…beautiful, but (we hope) just a memory, for this year anyway…
Lord & Schryver Conservancy blog 