The Garden is READY!

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Open Garden, Summer, Tours

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Gaiety Hollow, garden benches, Garden Tours, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, Lord & Schryver Conservancy

Garden manager and curator Lindsey Kerr is away this week so I’m jumping back in for a quick post. The garden will be open this Saturday at 10:30 for touring ($5.00 per adult) and if you haven’t been in a while it is worth the trip. Lindsey Kerr has worked miracles in the garden along with the team of volunteers who trim and weed and tidy…not to mention to the volunteers who are replacing the hard-scape in the garden…i.e. the rotting wooden fences, benches and gates. But first…the garden. I stepped in the gate this morning and was just delighted…

Fresh, organized and the smells…yum. Lindsey has been working with the many garden plans and lists that Lord and Schryver made for their own garden over the years, and has replanted many of the old-fashioned favorites they often used. Noticable this summer are the Canterbury Bells…the bells are back!

and this morning I sat briefly in my favorite shady benches for views of the garden…

And the pergola and bench under the grape arbor are COMPLETE! (I spent a whole week here a few years ago drawing!)

Mark your calendar…Saturday June 24th!

Fall is Here!

26 Monday Sep 2016

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

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fall garden, Gaiety Hollow, garden, garden benches, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, Lord & Schryver Conservancy, repair of wooden garden structures, repairing historic garden hardscape, vintage garden photos

After a too-long absence I stepped into the garden today and as usual was delighted by the fresh beauty awaiting me on this bright and sunny and warm fall Sunday.

At the back gate I noted the wonderful copper covering of the curved wooden element on the gate frame…to keep the water out of the wood I presume, and before long it will be as green as the gate but TODAY the copper shone in the sun…

The flowers I watched the volunteers plant in the spring are in their last real blaze…

and I then headed to the grape arbor to see the progress the builders have made. They are, bit by bit, replacing all the wooden elements without disturbing this key central bit of hardscape. It has been fascinating to watch…

They are even removing the comfy bench and lattice under the arbor (where I have spent a LOT of time looking and drawing)…here it is in spring

and today dismantled for repair and replacement…

and here’s a vintage shot of the arbor…

This week I hope to meet up with the builders and bring you more inside info…until then, watch out for those September spider webs!

The First Open Garden (and the new fence)!

10 Monday Aug 2015

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

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Bush Gardens, Deepwood Gardens, Gaiety Hollow, garden, garden benches, Garden Tours, gardens, historic fence rebuilding, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, vintage garden photos

In case you missed the first open garden event today, you still have two more chances. Thinking of doing the “High Street Hustle” on August 15? The garden will be open that day from 7:30 to 10:00 a.m. Sunday, September 13th the garden will be open again from 2-5 p.m….so if you went today you might want to come back as the season begins to change. (As one who has been in the garden in every season, I know for sure it is always fascinating and always beautiful.)

Here’s what it looked like today: Board member Susan Miller greeted people at the gate with information on the garden…

The day was perfect, warm and sunny, cool in the shade…perfect for strolling and straw hats…

and chatting…

Board members were scattered around the garden to give helpful information, and they had set up fantastic vintage photos of the garden so you could juxtapose what had been, what is, and what will be again…

These two plants by the front door are gone, but plans are to replant…

The west side fountain garden…and the allee north and south

the grape arbor…

and the parterres…

this year filled with zinnias…

and the new fence…

The very beautiful “hardscape” in this garden is, of course, wooden. Things decay over time…

but luckily for Gaiety Hollow there is a crew of talented and dedicated volunteers who are willing and able to replicate these benches and fences…Woody Dukes rebuilt the bench last year, and Christopher Hackett and his crew of Tom McMullen and Jack Fisher rebuilt the fence this summer…with Don Roberts standing by to paint the items as cut and before being assembled…touch up still required. HOURS of work and planning…for love of the garden. Thank you so much.

So…mark your calendar and make a point of taking a walk through this peaceful place right in the heart of Salem. We are so lucky here in Salem to have this “garden trifecta” within a half mile…Bush Gardens, Deepwood Gardens and Gaiety Hollow…maybe a visit to all three is in your near future??

A Beautiful Day to “Hard Prune”

17 Friday Apr 2015

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

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Ellen Biddle Shipman, Gaiety Hollow, garden benches, gardens, Historic Gardens

Friday is volunteer day at Gaiety Hollow so I headed over there this morning…

The volunteers were taking their coffee break and “talking gardens”…

Along with the blueberry banana bread, Gretchen had Judith Tankard’s excellent book on the early and influential garden designer Ellen Biddle Shipman (for whom Edith Schryver worked in New York for City 5 years in the 1920’s)…

Gretchen had been searching for evidence that Shipman had ever used a white Lutyen’s-type bench in any of her gardens…and…

This is good news because we have such a bench, thanks to Nan and George Happ (kindly donated when they moved to an urban loft last year), look for it later this season!

But the talk turned to soil and compost and less glamorous topics…because every garden has less glamorous topics…

which make the more glamorous things possible…

Aegopodium

07 Thursday Aug 2014

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

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Aegopodium, boxwood revival, Gaiety Hollow, garden benches, pruning boxwood hedges, weeds

Eek…a nasty word that…aegopodium. A native of Europe and Asia, often called Bishop’s weed/ground elder/goutweed…this plant is regarded as an ecological threat. It is AGGRESSIVE and INVASIVE, and reduces species diversity in the ground layer. In other words, you don’t want it in your garden. It has long white branching rhizomes underground that go everywhere. EVERYWHERE. When I was in the garden early in the summer it looked like this…

You might almost think it was pretty, with the little white flowers…until you began to notice it was EVERYWHERE…

with the volunteer gardeners bravely waging war against it…

The other day I was in the garden and was amazed to see that MUCH aegopodium had been removed, with newspaper put down and mulch on top to keep it down…

fingers crossed! But on the brighter side…the boxwood is back!!

and the new bench looks great!

The Arbor Bench Takes Shape

27 Friday Jun 2014

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

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bench rebuilding, Gaiety Hollow, garden, garden benches, Historic Gardens, lattice, Lord & Schryver

In spite of rain!!! There are always ways around things…

I think I forgot to mention that the work Woody is doing in the garden on the fences, gates and bench has been funded by a “Toolbox Grant” from the City of Salem, administered through the Historic Landmarks Advisory Commission. The grant deadline for completion of the work is July 31st, so Woody is working against the clock…

Yesterday Woody and Christopher worked on rebuilding the bench seat…

and Don Roberts completed all the painting of the strips that will be used to rebuild the back of the bench…the “privacy lattice” so-called for the close arrangement of strips and the small square spaces between.

Woody mentioned that all the strips you see in the photo will be used in just the back of the bench. Stay tuned for “the REVEAL”… And thank you, City of Salem!

Working with Wood (continued….)

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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

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fences, Gaiety Hollow, garden, garden benches, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, restoring wooden fences

READERS…many apologies! I was trying to cut and paste Woody Dukes’ excellent emails about the recent repairs of gates and fences and arbors at the garden. Unfortunately all the visuals failed, so here, in my own words is what happened. As Woody began to examine the arbor and several gates, he found the rotten members were in worse shape than he originally imagined. He had to remove the arbor completely to rebuild it, he had to rebuild the gate to the service area, he had to reset posts and cut decorative motifs…i.e. A LOT OF WORK! With the excellent assistance of Christopher Hackett, David Lichter and Don Roberts, the work is coming along nicely. Woody chose not to use pressure-treated posts as they have a modern look, instead to set them in gravel to wick the water away from the posts. He was also able to reuse historic segments froom earlier repairs. In the interest of time (mine AND yours!) I’m just going to include here a long series of process photos without captions, but I think you can readily see what happened! (Sorry for the snafu!!)

The arbor was found to have so much rot that repair would be difficult…

and has he worked along Woody soon discovered that the wood was filled with ants…

the arbor was going to have to be totally rebuilt.

and now it starts to rain for a few days…see you next week!

Working with Wood

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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

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Gaiety Hollow, Gairty Hollow, garden, garden benches, garden design, Historic Gardens, repair of wooden garden structures

Let me share with you a remarkable series of emails I’ve gotten from our arborist, and master carpenter, Woody Dukes…While I was away Woody and a crew of volunteers have been working on the wooden hardscape in the Gaiety Hollow Garden. Woody’s photos and descriptions are fascinating and fun to follow…the discourse begins in early May as follows:

“Christopher Hackett and I have been working on a couple of projects including yesterday (Tuesday 5/3) morning measuring and cutting pieces of a new gate to replace the rotting one that opens into the Reserve Area.”

“Rot was pervasive in the bottom part of the gate that threatened it’s ability to stay in it’s jamb. The wood around the lower hinge was soft enough for the screws to let go.”

“So I increased the number of pixels which cleared up the image a bit from the original. Something that I notice is that there is not a full bench there. It has no depth in the center. I only see the seats in the two back corners. This tells me the original structure was shallower than the current one. There is also a center post in back which leads me to believe that this bench was intentionally and originally a part of the fence. The panel widths are equal with the center one split evenly in two.”

“It only changed when I had to do a major repair because the support for the bench, which was sitting on concrete blocks, and attach anchoring cables to the rear posts (around 2010) because the whole structure was tilting into the garden and was approaching structural failure. I had to modify the design by adding a rectangle of 4x4s add more stability to a major portion of the north fence.”

January in the House and Garden

17 Friday Jan 2014

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

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Gaiety Hollow, garden, garden benches, Garden in winter, house remodel, iron in tree, Lord & Schryver, tree removal, white oak

Gaiety Hollow has been a beehive of activity of late. Luckily today arborist Woody Dukes was on hand to explain the activities of last week when the stump of the old oak was cut down, the badly overgrown crab apple near the front door was removed, and also the overgrown katsura tree in one of the beds near the allee…take a look at the process of removing the huge stump…

when the stump was down they began to saw it into pieces which was difficult due to all the metal inside…denoted by the black marks…

several pieces still had the spaces where metal receptacles for 2×4’s were inserted in the trunk to support a bench…

The crab apple and the katsura, flowering trees planted by Lord and Schryver in the 1930’s, had become hugely overgrown…the crab apple will be replaced with another smaller crab apple. The original tree had been injured when it was small but new wood hard formed around the injury…

Meanwhile inside the house work has begun. First up was removing some paint with lead in it from the living room woodwork and repairing a leak that caused a wallpaper problem (the self-stripping wallpaper!)

It almost feels like spring…(though Woody reminded me that the garden has a different camellia blooming almost every month!) Stay tuned…

The Garden Bench

06 Friday Dec 2013

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

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Gaiety Hollow, garden benches, garden design, Historic Gardens, Lord & Schryver, vintage garden photos

Gretchen reminded me that the vintage image of the garden from the house needed to be “flipped”, and when I made that correction I got looking at the image…here is a larger version…

and here’s that same view from the second floor of the house this past year…

and the garden seat this summer…

and again this fall…

and here are Irene and Jon using this lovely spot as a “photo op”…

and I suspect this isn’t the first time. Wouldn’t it be fun to find some other photos in this same spot?

Gaiety Hollow: Lord and Schryver's Garden and Home

~ Current news from the Lord and Schryver Conservancy

Tag Archives: garden benches

The Garden is READY!

Fall is Here!

The First Open Garden (and the new fence)!

A Beautiful Day to “Hard Prune”

Aegopodium

The Arbor Bench Takes Shape

Working with Wood (continued….)

Working with Wood

January in the House and Garden

The Garden Bench