Brine Garden Open Day & Fall Events

 

The Garden Conservancy, which makes America’s finest private gardens available to the public, presents the Brine Garden and the Scherer Garden in Pawling, NY, this Saturday, October 2, from 2-6 pm, rain or shine ($5 admission per garden).

In fall, rather than focusing on flowers, these gardens feature the ambiance created by vistas, their plants’ form, texture, and color. Kathy and Stan Scherer’s  botanically rich garden includes woodland paths, a mix of woody and herbaceous plantings, and a memorable Quaker Hill view.

The Brine Home in fall with red Viburnum berries. © gardenlarge.com

The New York Times, Horticulture Magazine, and other publications have featured Duncan Brine’s work. In the New York Times, Anne Raver describes the Brine Garden as “a dreamlike landscape.” She writes: “…the plants have been given unexpected roles, in unusual places, and the delight comes in seeing what they will do on this ever-changing stage.”

Horticulture’s Carleen Madigan explores Brine’s landscape design method, saying, “…the Brine garden is the embodiment of Duncan’s philosophy of gardening large. This concept doesn’t necessarily relate to size; it’s the idea that an entire property, be it two acres or twenty, should be seen and treated as one garden…”

Marilyn Bethany, formerly of New York magazine, wrote about the Brine Garden in www.ruralintelligence.com. “All good gardens are instructive. This one? It will blow your mind.”

In the Brine Garden: Gravel pathways wind through densely planted areas. © gardenlarge.com

 

Diverse trees, shrubs, and grasses structure the naturalistic six acre Brine Garden, including an allée of the native, faux evergreen, Taxodium; a group of the uncommon understory maple, Acer triflorum; a grove of the native exfoliating birch, Betula nigra; a clutch of dense tree canopies from Persia, Parrotia; a band of distinctive fast growing, native swamp oak, Quercus bicolor, which was just introduced at the site of the former World Trade center; and the towering grass, Miscanthus giganteus, just coming into “flower” which to many resembles bamboo. Brine Garden visitors receive a property map and a list with botanical and common names distinguishing between U.S. native and locally indigenous plants.

 

Brine Garden 20th anniversary

 

Saturday’s Open Day is part of the Brine Garden 20th anniversary, which honors Doug Tallamy’s groundbreaking book, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants (2009 Timber Press and available at Pawling’s Book Cove). Tallamy, an entomologist, writes of a future where the canopies of indigenous backyard trees link to provide meaningful habitat, especially for birds and pollinating insects.

Brine Garden 20th Anniversary logo

The 20th year celebration began with a festive opening for an exhibit of Brine Garden images at Pawling’s Gallery on the Green and continues with the concurrent publication of a magazine article and a new book featuring the garden.

Duncan Brine’s article, “Inviting Nature into Your Garden,” urges those, “starting a new garden or contemplating a redesign, to consider a naturalistic approach, which has renewed relevance in today’s environment.” His feature story, accompanied by many images, is in the current issue of The American Gardener, published by the American Horticultural Society. (To read excerpts from the article, join the Brine Garden page on Facebook.)

Gardens of the Hudson Valley (2010 Monacelli Press), with a foreword by the New York Botanical Garden president, Gregory Long, has lavish, revealing photographs of the Brine Garden by Sue Daley and Steve Gross and interpretative text by Nancy Berner and Susan Lowry.

FrOGS Event

FrOGS logo

Duncan, with his wife and partner Julia Brine, will staff one of many tables at the free (donations accepted) upcoming FrOGS Art Show and Celebration of the Great Swamp, October 23 and 24, on Pawling’s Quaker Hill, in the exhibit hall behind Christ Church. FrOGS is dedicated to the protection and preservation of the Great Swamp of Dutchess and Putnam Counties through science and education. This lively annual event allows the whole family to learn, from a variety of sources, about what’s going on with the nature in our midst, and to discover the Brines’ passion and vision for a private garden’s potential. They are principals of Horticultural Design, Inc., a landscape design and installation firm, specializing in native plants and naturalistic gardens since 1984.

 

Visit www.gardenlarge.com, for directions to the Brine and Scherer gardens, information about the FrOGS event, and more about Horticultural Design, Inc, Duncan Brine, and the Brine Garden.

Duncan Brine in the American Gardener, published by the American Horticultural Society

The American Gardener with Stellar Stonecrops on the cover.

Inviting Nature into Your Garden by Duncan Brine
If you’re starting a new garden or contemplating a redesign, consider a naturalistic approach, which has renewed relevance in today’s environment.

http://www.ahs.org/publications/the_american_gardener/10/09/index.htm

A REALLY Cool Art and Garden Celebration: Brine Garden 20th Anniversary, Sat. Aug 21 –KatonahGreen

 

The American Gardener to feature Duncan Brine’s naturalistic garden

American Horticultural Society’s

The American Gardener Magazine

Editor: David Ellis
Author: Duncan Brine
Photographers: Rob Cardillo and Duncan Brine

© gardenlarge

This fall, the American Horticultural Society’s The American Gardener magazine is slated to feature Duncan Brine’s article and photographs about “a naturalistic garden”.

The article and the Brine Garden’s 20th Anniversary both honor Doug Tallamy’s groundbreaking book, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants (2009 Timber Press).

Twenty years ago, Duncan Brine found direction in moving away from the status quo of traditional gardens and toward a naturalistic garden’s engaging creative process and philosophy. A naturalistic garden combines a gardener’s needs and desires with nature’s dictates; its inherent beauty follows the suggestion of landscape conditions. It’s not a pre-meditated design forced upon the landscape; rather, a naturalistic garden is itself, and looks like itself, without affect.  In his article, Brine discusses naturalistic techniques and pragmatic approaches that help you create your own naturalistic garden.

Among other notable achievements, photographer Rob Cardillo has received a Gold award for best photography from the Garden Writers of America .

 

The American Gardener is now available both digitally and in print to members of the American Horticultural Society.

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