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Duncan and Julia Brine and the Brine Garden

Duncan Brine’s Naturalistic Landscape Design Seminar at the New York Botanical Garden

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Naturalistic Landscape Design

Annually, GardenLarge principal landscape designer, Duncan Brine, leads a popular seminar at the New York Botanical Garden.

A naturalistic garden connects to the existing conditions of its site. Discover a landscape design method that elicits responses from the site rather than imitating a conventional style or structure. Topics include connecting spaces, the relationship between background and foreground, transparency, and framing views. The instructor illustrates his talk with images of his six-acre naturalistic garden.

Friday, Feb. 17, 2017, 10 a.m.–12 p.m.

Instructor: Duncan Brine

Registration

Consider following the class with a stroll through the garden.


Garden Conservancy Open Day at the Brine Garden

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The Garden Conservancy is the first national organization devoted to preserving exceptional American gardens for the public’s education and enjoyment.

“We conserve beautiful gardens because they are a vital part of our nation’s cultural heritage.”

The Garden Conservancy invites the public to visit America‘s finest private gardens. The Conservancy’s Open Days Program encourages appreciation of “gardens as living works of art“.

Norman McGrath photographs the Brine Garden in its 25th Year

© Norman McGrath

The Brine Garden – Duncan & Julia Brine 2015 Open Day – the 25th Anniversary of the Garden Saturday, October 17 from 12pm to 6pm, rain or shine Pawling, NY. Grass and gravel pathways connect ecologically and horticulturally diverse areas in this naturalistic, six-acre garden and arboretum. The maturing native plant collection includes an allée of Taxodium d. (with knees), groups of Chionanthus v. (with drupes), and more than twenty Viburnum (native and non-native), some with showy and abundant berries. Several imposing hedges of Miscanthus giganteus structure the garden and relate to the Phragmites of this formerly agrarian landscape. You’ll receive a property map and a plant list which indicates U.S. and Dutchess County natives. Anne Raver of the New York Times profiled this landscape designer’s garden. The Brine Garden is a chapter of Private Gardens of the Hudson Valley and Gardens of the Hudson Valley and is featured in Designer Plant Combinations, 50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants, Horticulture, and Hudson Valley magazine, amongst others. Duncan Brine is an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden. He published an article on naturalistic gardens in American Horticultural Society’s magazine, American Gardener. See images on www.gardenlarge.com. An entrance fee of $7.00 helps support the Garden Conservancy and Friends of the Great Swamp. Handicapped Accessibility: no Brine Garden Office Porch

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Directions Native Plants & Other Favorites in GardenLarge’s Brine Garden

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Kindred Manitoga

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  • Manitoga: Force of Nature | Garden Design

    • Named Manitoga by Wright after the Algonquin word for “place of great spirit,” his property consisted of a modernist house and studio set amid miles of landscape elements he coaxed out of existing vegetation. Altogether, Manitoga was the product of his lifelong commitment to the integration of art and nature. “He wanted to live in harmony with nature rather than dominate it or erase it. This is common practice now, but in the  1940s and ’50s it was rather radical,” says Carol Franklin, a principal of Philadelphia landscape design firm Andropogon Associates and a frequent visitor to Manitoga from the ’50s through the ’70s as Wright’s cousin and friend.
       
       

    • While the loss of many of Wright’s artful passages may seem tragic, Franklin points out that Wright embraced the dynamism and surprises of nature. “Russel knew nature was never finished,” she says. “One of the last great events of his life was a hurricane that downed tremendous trees. He rerouted paths and brought attention to the fallen pines. He loved it — scraping away without bulldozing.” One has to wonder what he, as both an artist and ecologist, would have done about the landscape now. To Franklin, it’s clear: “He would have accepted it, and used his imagination to turn the hemlock disaster into a theatrical event.” 

 

GardenLarge: on the Front Page in the Hamptons

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    • Advice Offered On Creating A Naturalistic Landscape Design – 27east

      Publication: The East Hampton Press & The Southampton Press

      By Anne Halpin

      Gardeners interested in a more natural look for their landscapes were treated to an inspiring and insightful talk on Sunday afternoon at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton by Duncan and Julia Brine.

      The Long Bridge at the Brine Garden © gardenlarge.com

      The principal designer and his wife and partner in the Pawling, New York-based Garden Large, a naturalistic landscape design firm…

      Their talk focused on the process of making a naturalistic garden personal and unique to each site…

      The first step in the process involves acquiring a sense of the region and the characteristics of your particular property, what Mr. Brine calls “the givens.”

      Mr. Brine used his own family’s property in Dutchess County to illustrate the design process…

      For Mr. Brine, naturalistic landscape design responds to the native plants already in place. The landscape is understood as an environment, the plantings part of a whole—a bigger picture than a traditional garden bed or border…

      For the Brines, the goal of a naturalistic garden is to, in Mr. Brine’s words, “idealize and partner with nature’s potential in a place.”

      A large garden such as theirs can replicate the different ecosystems of slopes, and wet lowlands, the plantings visually integrating with views of their neighbor’s property and the distant ridgelines. On a small property, a naturalistic garden can’t invoke an entire ecosystem, but it can serve as a fragment of nature, a quotation of a natural environment.

      The naturalistic garden…can offer a refuge and respite for the senses. And because the plants are chosen to suit the givens, the garden will look like it belongs there, and the plants will thrive. It’s a low-maintenance, resource-conservative place that can nourish the gardener’s soul as it helps nature along…

      These are excerpts, for the full article, go to http://www.27east.com/

Join us in the Hamptons this weekend?

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Hudson Valley’s Duncan Brine, aka Garden Large,
Speaks in the Hamptons on Sunday, March 18 at 1pm

The Peconic Land Trust announces its third annual lecture series at Bridge Gardens, in Bridgehampton, NY. On March 18 at 1:00pm, Duncan Brine, principal of Garden Large, presents his naturalistic landscape design process, expanding on his recent article in “American Gardener” magazine.

“A naturalistic garden combines a gardener’s needs and desires with nature’s dictates; its design cannot be premeditated because its inherent beauty is inextricably linked to the landscape on which it is created.”

Mr. Brine is an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden and the New England Wild Flower Society. Garden Large specializes in native plants and whole property gardens. Visit www.gardenlarge.com, for more about Garden Large, Duncan Brine, and the Brine Garden.

Long Bridge at the Brine Garden, Pawling, NY© gardenlarge.com
The Long Bridge at the Brine Garden, Pawling, NY 

Scott Medbury, president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Vincent Simeone, director of Planting Fields Arboretum, and others, are also featured in the speaker series. Reservations are required and the fee is $15 per person. Refreshments will be served following each program.

For reservations and additional dates and details on the speaker series, go to Bridge Gardens on www.PeconicLandTrust.org.

The Peconic Land Trust

The Peconic Land Trust was established in 1983 to conserve Long Island’s working farms and natural lands.  The nonprofit Trust has worked in concert with landowners, local government, partner organizations, and communities to conserve over 10,000 acres in NY, on Long Island. The Trust’s professional staff carries out the necessary research and planning to identify and implement alternatives to development. While working to conserve the productive farms, watersheds, woodlands, and beach front of Long Island, the Trust is also protecting the unique rural heritage and natural resources of the region. The Trust has Stewardship Centers in Southold, Cutchogue, Bridgehampton and Amagansett and its Main Office is in Southampton, NY. The public is invited to enjoy a wide variety of fun and educational activities through the Trust’s “Connections” programs which strive to connect people to the natural lands of Long Island’s East End.

Bridge Gardens

Bridge Gardens was established in 1988 by Harry Neyens and Jim Kilpatric, who designed and installed the gardens over the ensuing 10 years. In 1997, Bridge Gardens Trust was created as a charitable corporation to maintain and preserve the gardens. In 2008, Neyens and Kilpatric donated Bridge Gardens to the Peconic Land Trust. Rick Bogusch, a landscape architect with a long career at Cornell Plantations in Ithaca, NY,  is the garden manager.

Bridge Gardens covers over five acres and consists of an Inner Garden and an Outer Garden. Developed first, the Inner Garden features a large, meticulously-trimmed knot garden surrounded by beds of 180 different culinary, medicinal, ornamental, and textile and dyeing herbs. Overlooking these plantings, the garden house is the manager’s residence/education center. In the Outer Garden, the favorite attraction is a collection of antique and modern roses. Bridge Gardens also contains animal topiaries, a lavender parterre, perennial beds and borders, a water garden, woodland paths, a hidden bamboo room, double hedgerows of privet with viewing ports, and specimen shrubs and trees.