Tag Archives: Volunteering

A visit to the Special Collections at UofO

25 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in archives, Gaiety Hollow, Lord & Schryver, Restoration

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Yesterday, I made a trip down to the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Oregon. Lord & Schryver’s business papers, photographs, and other miscellaneous items, are stored in the Special Collections. Over the years, our volunteers have made many trips to the Special Collections to find information about Lord & Schryver’s garden designs and to better understand their style and plant choices. Thanks to our volunteers, we have many copies of Lord & Schryver’s materials at Gaiety Hollow.

I am in the process of writing plans for the restoration of the gardens as a whole, and each garden “room” within the whole. Another visit was in order. I was particularly interested in seeing two boxes of film negatives. It had been years since a volunteer had looked at them and I wanted to see them for myself.

boxes

Visiting the Special Collections feels a bit like going on a treasure hunt. Not everything has been cataloged. We keep turning up new bits of information in obscure places.

For example, I found a recipe for French dressing stuffed in an envelope of negatives.

French dressing

I was very excited to find a couple negatives of what looks to be the putto from Gaiety Hollow. We have been wondering what is his story. Based on these negatives, I’m guessing that Elizabeth found him in Italy and brought him back to Salem. I’m hoping that looking through other records will turn up an invoice or receipt for the purchase of the putto. (My apologies for the poor photo quality–these are negatives on a lightbox.)

Putto in birdbath
Putto, back right

Another great find was a negative of a poster that Lord & Schryver submitted as part of a design contest by the magazine House Beautiful.  I had heard about this image before, but had not yet seen it. The “legend” at the bottom confirms what volunteers had suspected–that the Pergola and grape vine, Parterre Garden, and several flowering trees, were remnants of the Elizabeth Lord’s mother’s garden. Seeing that the piece of land which became the allee with the two oak trees as not included in the designs, I gather that this contest submission was created in the early 1930s. The image of their living room, in the top right, and its description in the legend add insights into their taste and style.

House Beautiful Poster

Contest poster

House Beautiful Poster blurb

Legend

I also found a smattering of new-to-us images of Edith meeting with clients. It’s nice to see images that humanize Edith and Elizabeth and show their professional and personal characters.

Edith with clients Walla Walla

Edith, right, with clients

I look forward to retrieving more information from Special Collections in the coming months and sharing it with you. If any readers have old photographs of Lord & Schryver or gardens they designed, we would love to see them!

 

HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF THE LORD & SCHRYVER ARCHITECTURAL RECORDS, COLL 098, BOXES 6 AND 7, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON LIBRARIES, EUGENE, OREGON.

Update: Brick walks

12 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in brick paths, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, gardening, landscape architecture, Lord & Schryver, Restoration, Uncategorized, winter

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It has been more than a month since I last posted about our brick walk restoration project. They are not finished, but we hope to have them completed by the end of this week. I should note that we have concentrated our efforts on the paths in and around the Parterre Garden (sometimes called the Flower Garden) because they were in an obvious state of disrepair.

Returning visitors to Gaiety Hollow will immediately notice how much better the walks look and feel under your feet. They are now straight and level. The bricks that edge the path are all new and give the paths a crisp, clean look.

We aren’t completely clear on the history of the brick paths. There is speculation that parts of the paths were originally part of Elizabeth Lord’s mother’s garden. The modes Lord house was located at the corner of High Street and Mission Street, but the property encompassed approximately 1/4 of the city block. Juliet Lord was well known for her extensive flower gardens and Elizabeth credited her mother for teaching her to love gardens. Undated hand-colored lantern slides show the Gaiety Hollow property, but we are uncertain if they are of Juliet Lord’s gardens or Edith and Elizabeth’s gardens.

Undated; the Parterre Garden, looking north

We can say, however, that the paths were constructed by the early 1930s. Edith and Elizabeth moved into the Gaiety Hollow house in 1932. Dated photographs and plans from the 1930s show the layout of the paths.

Early plan for Gaiety Hollow

In the intervening 85 yeas, the paths fell into disrepair. Between the untold number of enthusiastic gardeners who have trod these paths, and the countless wheelbarrows of compost rolling over them, and seasons of freezing and thawing, many bricks had sunken, shifted, and broken. We discovered that a few of the paths had been redone during the intervening years and set in concrete mortar. Those paths we left as-is. Other paths were set on sand and gravel and had severely degraded. A laser level indicated that they were 2 inches lower than the paths on mortar!

When we took on this project, we decided that we wanted to restore the paths to how Edith and Elizabeth knew them. Visitors will feel like they have stepped back in time to the years Edith and Elizabeth were living and working at Gaiety Hollow (1932-1969).

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There are changes that will be new to visitors, but they would not be new to Edith and Elizabeth. We have chosen to reconstruct the brick pedestal that stood at the intersection of the Parterre Garden until 1970. We removed the wide brick path leading to the Pergola and replaced the narrow path and grass strips that were there until around 1970. We also removed the degrading pavers in the north path and replaced them with grass that we can see in an early photograph and plan.

Undated historic photograph
Earlier this week

We did elect to make a few changes: We raised the grade of some of the paths slightly to improve drainage and all the bricks along the path edges were replaced. Visitors should not notice the grade change. The new bricks fit well with the old, but visitors will perceive that they are newer and it will create an opportunity for us to explain the garden’s story.

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When you visit the gardens next season, you might notice a few quirks in the paths and the patterns of the bricks. Someone repairing the paths years ago must have made a few changes. We replaced the bricks exactly as they were (to the consternation of mason Julian).

All in all, the Parterre Garden has been restored to its original beauty. Visitors will be able to clearly see Edith and Elizabeth’s vision for the garden and the geometry of the design.

A small group of dedicated volunteers planted our spring blooming bulbs last week (Thank you!) and I am making plans for the perennials that we will plant in the spring. I hope that you visit us in 2018 and enjoy the progress we are making.

 

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.

HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS AND PLANS COURTESY OF THE LORD & SCHRYVER ARCHITECTURAL RECORDS, COLL 098, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, UNIVERSITY OF OREGON LIBRARIES, EUGENE, OREGON.

 

Hated weeds, take 3

27 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, gardening, weeds

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Last week, I asked What might be called “the scourge of Gaiety Hollow”? It was less than 12 hours before someone guessed correctly:

Aegopodium podagraria

Hiding in Geranium
Aegopodium leaves

Also known as ground elder, bishop’s weed, gout weed, snow-on-the-mountain, English masterwort, and many indecent names that a gardener calls it in a fit of fury.

There are two varieties of Aegopodium. One has green leaves; the other has variegated white/green leaves. In my experience, they are equally aggressive. They both bloom in the summer a rather unremarkable umbel-shaped flower similar to Queen Anne’s lace. This late in the season, Aegopodium is still lush and green.

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Covering the base of a Hydrangea

Portland includes it on its Nuisance Plant List. Although it is considered less aggressive than many other plants in native ecosystems, it is extremely aggressive in a garden setting and (almost) impossible to get rid of. Volunteers have spent countless hours pulling it out of the plant beds at Gaiety Hollow and yet it keeps coming back. Its roots are well entwined with the boxwood hedges making complete eradication unlikely, but we can at very least keep it from getting out of control again.

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Mother plant on the left. A new plant growing from the rhizomes to the right.

If you have Aegopodium in you garden, I would advise you to remove it as quickly as possible. Most likely you will not get all of it out. A fragment of its white rhizomes left underground will regrow. Even if you think that you like it, begin removing it now to keep it under control.

Like the other weeds I have mentioned, digging seems the best way to go in a garden setting. I dig with a shovel or trowel and follow the roots through the garden bed, gently pulling the plants and roots as I go. I try not to break the plants and feel very satisfied if I can pull up roots more than a foot long at a time. If it is growing into the roots of a perennial, I face the choice of bare-rooting the perennial or pitching it altogether.

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Another example of how the plant spreads by underground “runners” (rhizomes)

However, if you have a large patch of Aegopodium with no other desirable broadleaf plants mixed in, applications of an herbicide might take down the population. Always read the label on herbicides to make sure that you are applying the right product, at the right amount, in the most opportune conditions.

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Aegopodium in Dahlias

Can you see the white Aegopodium root extending to the left? It is growing straight through this clump of Dahlia tubers. I planted the Dahlia earlier this year as a single tuber, so the Aegopodium has grown over 2 feet in one season. I will have to divide this group of tubers to remove the Aegopodium. I don’t want to risk accidentally re-planting the Aegopodium come spring. Constant vigilance is key! Again, a fragment of root left alive will regrow and quickly begin taking over.

I have many other hated weeds, but these are our biggest challenges at both Gaiety Hollow and the historic gardens at Deepwood. What is your least favorite weed?

We are very grateful for the many hours of labor our dedicated volunteers have put into removing these weeds. The gardens would be a jungle without their help. 

 

Progress on the brick paths

04 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in brick paths, Flower Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Restoration, Uncategorized

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If you haven’t been to Gaiety Hollow in the past week, you might not recognize the Flower Garden!

Last Wednesday evening, Dave Hiser brought his youth group from the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in South Salem to Gaiety Hollow. Racing against the setting sun, 25 energetic youth and 5 adult supervisors pulled up the brick paths, scraped off sand and mud, and stacked the bricks on pallets. The north path made of crumbling pavers and concrete was demolished with a sledgehammer and is heading to the landfill.

They finished the evening with zucchini bread, long drinks of cold water, and a group photo on the lawn.

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Thanks to these wonderful volunteers, the brick walks in the Flower Garden are almost ready for a make-over.

On Friday, our garden volunteers joined the efforts. Undeterred by rain, they cleaned up rubble, knocked out edging bricks, discovered more bricks hidden under an old path, and smoothed paths for walking. Pruning the boxwood away from the bricks elicited excitement from some, groans from others, and lots of jokes.

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There are still a few preparations to be done before our contractors come in–removing the short path going to the shed, taking out the edges of the paths–but we should be ready by early next week. The historic bricks are being saved so that masons can reuse them in the paths and retain the feeling of charm so integral to the gardens.

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When this construction is complete, the Flower Garden should look as Edith and Elizabeth intended it. Smooth paths. Clean edges in straight lines. No more pooling water. The pedestal and putto as the central focal point. Grass in the north path. Grass and a brick path to the Pergola. The geometry and bones that Edith and Elizabeth so purposefully laid out will be restored.

Words of caution: If you are visiting the garden as a volunteer or for a meeting during October, please approach Gaiety Hollow from Mission Street to avoid walking through the construction zone in the back gardens and to avoid interrupting our contractors when they are onsite. We want all of our visitors to be safe while at Gaiety Hollow. Thank you!

Changes are afoot at Gaiety Hollow

21 Thursday Sep 2017

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

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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
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.

The gardens at Deepwood

01 Thursday Jun 2017

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

C. glomerata at Deepwood

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
Lysa
Donna
David

“April, come she will

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Open Garden, Spring, spring annuals, Uncategorized

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When streams are ripe and swelled with rain…”

This spring has been unusually wet here in Salem. It has made for a sometimes difficult situation for gardeners trying to get work done and trying to time flower combinations. Last Friday’s wind and rain finished off the cherry blossoms and blew away many of the Magnolia flowers. Our dauntless board chair, Bobbie Dolp, was outside in the horizontal rain, string-trimming and pulling dandelions from the lawns in preparation for our first Open Garden this past Sunday.

Many thanks to the volunteers to helped greet visitors on Sunday and thank you to all who came to see and enjoy the gardens. We hope that you come again to see the seasons  change as we dig deeper into rehabilitating the gardens.
As the early spring flowers fade, new blossoms open to take their place. Tulips are in full glory in the Flower Garden and more are showing color every day.

 

Elizabeth and Edith’s forget-me-nots form a backdrop to tulips and a blanket under the roses.
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Rhododendrons are beginning to open on the west side of the gardens.

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Our next Garden Tours are April 22nd. We hope that you join us.

First tour of the season

28 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Spring, Tours

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This past week was a whirlwind of activity at Gaiety Hollow. We had our first tour scheduled for Saturday and we wanted the gardens to look their best. Many, many thanks to the volunteers who put in over 60 hours of work to make the gardens shine.  Carpenters worked on the Pergola and cut plywood for guests and volunteers to walk on to avoid damaging the lawn. Garden volunteers filled up four large City compost bins with debris and needed to stash extra in the Service Yard.

Every day, we clean up more Camellia blossoms. You finish raking and turn around and there’s another one!
The morning of the tour, the gardens looked fresh and clean.

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Bobbie placed photos around the gardens so that guests could view the gardens in different seasons or years past.

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A sampling of camellias float in the pool.

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And daffodils and grape hyacinths were at their finest.

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We have more Garden Tours and Open Gardens coming up! The first Open Garden is April 9th, 1-4pm. More information on the website. We hope to see you in the gardens.

Sunshine and volunteers

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Bill Noble, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Spring, spring annuals, Vintage Photos

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Yesterday felt like the first true day of spring. The sun was shining and we could see blue blue sky between the white fluffy clouds. For the first time this season, the volunteer gardeners were able to get some work done at Gaiety Hollow. Not only did they finish planting all the spring annuals, but they also tackled the hellebore leaves. What a weight off my shoulders!

Primrose
Pansies
Bellis daisy
Hellebores
Grape hyacinth

The carpenters were also out working in the sunshine. One crew on the Pergola; one crew repairing the garage doors. If we get a spate of nice weather, we hope that both projects can be finished before the tour and open gardens begin.

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Chris and Tom work on the Pergola

In other news, we are really looking forward to Bill Noble‘s visit this coming week. Before starting his own consulting business, Bill was Director of Preservation at the Garden Conservancy and worked closely with noted gardens such as Longue Vue, the Gardens at Alcatraz, the Ruth Bancroft Garden, the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, and Hollister House Garden. He has been a great resource for the L&S Conservancy for several years. He will  be meeting with the board and committees this coming Friday and Saturday. And then, on Sunday, March 19, he will give a presentation on the Cornish Colony at 2pm in the WHC Dye House.

Bill

Edith Schryver cut her teeth at the Cornish Colony while working for Ellen Biddle Shipman. Shipman was one of the foremost designers of her time and known for her formal gardens and lush planting style. She was of the first generation of women to break into the male-dominated landscape architecture profession. There is no doubt of her influence on Edith Schryver.

Charles Platt Garden
Charles Platt Garden
Charles Platt Garden
Charles Platt Garden

 

Don’t miss this presentation! Not only is Bill a dynamic speaker, not only will he tie the Cornish Colony to the story of Edith and Elizabeth, but…There will be birthday cake!

Edith’s 116th birthday is on March 20th, but we are celebrating a day early with everyone who attends Bill’s lecture. Come for an energetic and lush presentation, stay for the cake! We hope to see you there. Don’t forget to register online.

Meet Lindsey Kerr!

30 Friday Sep 2016

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

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Today was our new garden advocate/curator’s first meeting with the volunteers at Gaiety Hollow.  Lindsey Kerr is newly arrived from Connecticut where she has been managing a private estate garden since finishing her graduate work.  I went along to meet Lindsey so I could introduce her to you, but first had to wander the garden.  On Friday the story is a little different than my usual solitary adventures.  The people who do the work to keep this garden beautiful are actually in the garden every Friday…

morning-in-the-garden

Serious dead-heading was going on…

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molly-deadheading

work on the bench and the arbor progresses…guess who?

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Name tags were in order today…

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tools and snacks at the ready…

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…special delivery from Amazon…

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Gretchen and Lindsey talk boxwood…

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a maverick.

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I take a turn through the garden…

statuary

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our vintage view for today…

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before getting down to work.  I wanted to get a picture of Lindsey and the volunteers “in the garden”…so here they are.

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And here’s Lindsey Kerr.  As she settles in, she will be in the garden everyday.  She’ll be learning about Oregon plants and climate, as well as trying to absorb the history of Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver as plants-women and architects.  She feels this is especially important so that she understands the right plant choices and care of the garden going forward.  She is interested in meeting you and looks forward to jumping into the Gaiety Hollow community with both feet.  Soon she will be writing blog posts about her daily activities in the garden as well as her thoughts for the future.  You will enjoy meeting her, I know.

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In the meantime…watch for those spider webs…this one especially beautiful this morning, filled with dew.

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