The McDuffee Gardens

After purchasing the Stuart Avenue Inn, Chris and I began assessing the adjoining garden known as The McDuffee Gardens (after Alice McDuffee who lived on the lot and tended a nationally recognized Shakespearean garden in the 20s); also known as The Casteel Gardens (after the man who demolished the house in the 80s and landscaped a formal garden with meandering footpaths, flower beds, gazebo, and pergola); and sometimes referred to as "The-then-so-grand-now-so-sad-gardens" (after twenty years of intervening neglect). Trees intended to be pruned and shaped grew gangly and misshapen as they competed for light. Overgrown hedges lost their trim and shapely silhouettes. We tripped over stone edgings to forgotten flower beds. What to dig out. What to transplant. What to compost. These topics dominated our conversations.

We started with a group of iris and lilies planted in a ground-level cement basin under an impressively huge weeping beach tree. In talking with Max Tibbitts and Karen Leys we learned these were the remains of a Victorian reflecting pond. Images of PBS's Rosemary and Thyme flooded my mind as I pictured myself restoring some elaborate garden centerpiece. After some cajoling, my partner Chris, trusty spade in hand, went to work clearing the bulbs, tubers and rhizomes. He made quick work of the first two shallow pools and was now standing chest deep in a cement basin full of muck. Around him lay two dozen glass ink wells, broken pottery chards, old light bulbs, perfume bottles, and other examples of human detritus. Although resembling a garbage heap, we prefer to refer to it as "the excavation."

After talking with previous owners we learned the pools' had been part of the original McDuffee estate and had been filled in long before the previous landscaping project. Water was essential in any self respecting Victorian garden whether controlled in rills or fountains, or pooled into glassy ponds populated with water lilies and frogs. Reflecting ponds helped create an oasis from the massive, noisy, coal-consuming, smoke-belching machinery that dominated the Age of Industrial Revolution. Times have changed, but who wouldn't enjoy a respite from the languid heat of a summer's day a comfortable chair under a shady tree, a book, some floating lilies, maybe a throaty (mosquito-eating) frog, and an opportunity to reflect. Well that's our plan for restoration. It may take us a while, but stop by next summer and let us know how you think we did.