Yew Dell Garden – A Return To A Rare Uniqueness

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Steve

I love Yew Dell Gardens. Located just outside Louisville, Kentucky by just a few short miles, it is one of America’s most unique, eccentric and yet lush gardens. It’s history I already included in the updated post below this one. That particular post was my first visit there and it was in the Fall. I describe its history in far more detail there.

But there is something of the ‘Anarchist In Us All’ that stretches imaginations and challenges the senses in this minor masterpiece of garden artisan-ship. Yes, the superlatives are flowing. I just always find it hard not to go a bit nutso when I describe this very cool and interesting place. It offers some bizarre brain food – from haunting images such as the lonely but somehow eloquent message in “The Hand” in the middle of the field below, to the raft of strangely-colored hybrid plants, cooked up via the hard work of the early owners. Those who have taken over the running of this intriguing spot have completely “bought in” to the originator’s designs and intent. We gain immensely from this, all of us.

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In a great bit of serendipity, the garden was also featuring sculptures mixed in with the plantings, offering them for exhibit and sale. I especially liked the limestone carvings of this artist, Don Lawlor, a sculptor with this website which is way worth a look:

Tucked around Mr. Lawlor’s fascinating bird bath are the curiously-colored and unique (to me, anyway) Coleus plants which we found in abundance and – to our delight – in a literal rainbow of hues, some very subtle and muted and some very bright and incredibly playful colors.

Check out these bright red babies:

We just missed the Astilbe Show behind these gorgeous plants, but other blooms and invading, competing flowers and plants make this riot of color a pure visual feast. I remarked to my Mom, who laughed: “Man, those are red enough to be a flower!!”

And the Coleus love did not stop there. When I mentioned “subtle”, I meant it. This stunning example of understated elegance provides the perfect foreground and lush perimeter for the rose behind it.

Other Coleus had different designs, such as this one with the blood vessels:

Or this bright yellow, quite playful beauty, shown here at the entrance in excessive plenty:

A peaceful beauty surrounds the lucky visitors, complete with heart warming people who work there and who never fail to be cheery and as helpful as they can be. Below is a most peaceful image, placed near the famous Holly Walk. My good friend The Happy Monk got himself all married there. And it took!! 😉

Proof that romance can flower near……….well……….flowers. But that’s redundant again. Like deja vu, all over again.

Mother and I wandered a piece, curious about adjoinging areas. The reason I bring this up is that we found what was either the original “Holly Walk” or else the practice field for Holly Walking. Kentucky is a basketball-crazy state. It led us to wonder if an area like this might not actually be for super tall basketballers. 🙂 Don’t laugh. When I said they’re crazy about basketball, I wasn’t just “Whistlin’ Dixie”. Anyway, we felt delighted with what was for us a discovery.

We’re easy that way.

Back to………..hmmmmmmmmmmmm………….how about a few ‘Naked Ladies’?

It’s the Amaryllis Belladonna Show! This Naked Lady is native South African plant – a bulb – which has the most interesting pattern of growing with a fairly graceful foliage, then losing the leaves while the blooms appear. The nickname seems rather obvious, too, I would think. Groves such as this are plentiful at Yew Dell – small, shady realms of sub canopy beauty which the garden takes immense advantage of. To me, the groves such as this are one of its true draws.

We were fortunate enough to happen by this particular grove while it was being watered by a good old fashioned oscillating sprinkler. What made it most interesting were the water trails, mixed with the interesting apparent motions of the pants themselves and the additon of this shimmering sort of sculture, smack in the midst of it all:

Other groves of interest to me: (a small glass sculpture paradise, complete with wind-swept, spent lilies.

A Hosta Paradise, featuring – but not restricted to – Hosta Giants with its very own Fertility Sculpture (always handy! 😉 ):

This is getting long………..more in a day or two………….OK, one more sculpture:

Is that cool or what?

Musical Interlude – Sigur Ros

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Steve

By now, we’ve all probably heard this track. It has become wildly popular in some circles. They are an Icelandic Band, home of some very serious musical talent by my judgments. Anyway, I do recall hearing this once a while back but just “re-found” them recently.

So I came late!! Sue me, then. I dare ya.

I absolutely love this moving and highly spiritual track and I was absolutely riveted by the fine work done by the BBC on the video. The seasonal changes in Greenland – I am sure – and the High Arctic in general just plain take the breath away as does that most interesting couple and family we run across in the video. 😉

Sigur Ros – a band worth a listen:

Louisville – Yew Dell Gardens

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Steve

(click all images to enlarge)

Peaceful, exotic, unusual, Yew Dell gardens is not your everyday visit. While they have the most gorgeous groupings of evergreens in their classic routine – with smaller, lower-growing species below and the taller groupings behind in a wash of evergreen textures, and all developed carefully over time – there is much more here. Even the more deciduous areas were constructed with the longer view, which means depth, color and structural form of an incredibly appealing nature.

First the evergreens:

Then those more deciduous groupings:

This is a garden that would have to have been a nursery-owner’s delight. Experiments galore still stud the grounds in a riot of stable,aged and standard plantings, mixed with some real bizarre eye candy. Lovingly constructed by the instigator of all this and his loving wife, Theodore and Martha Klein had them some real fun. Here is a short blurb taken from their website ( http://www.yewdellgardens.org/):

“Beginning with 33-acres of Oldham County farmland in 1941, Theodore and Martha Lee Klein spent the next 60-plus years developing an exquisite private estate, a successful commercial nursery and an extensive collection of unusual plants and outstanding gardens. Known locally, nationally and internationally as a first-rate plantsman, Theodore Klein was also a self-taught artisan who personally crafted the buildings and gardens that became known as Yew Dell.

Through the years, Klein collected over one thousand unusual specimen trees and shrubs which were displayed and evaluated in his arboretum. He also worked to develop new plant varieties for the regional landscape, amassing an impressive list of more than 60 unique introductions over his professional career.”

A perfect example of the level of “whimsy” Mr. Klein brought to bear on his property rests here, in the form of his small “Castle”:

Mr. Klein’s love of and appreciation for stone work is redolent throughout the entire place. His walls and even other entire buildings show a severe appreciation for the beauty and form of stone houses, walls and steps into gardens:

I love this wall. It reeks, somehow, of Kentucky, reminding one of the rows and rows of “slave walls” dry set and loose along the roads around horse farms in Central Kentucky:

In the end, however, it remains the plantings which left the largest impression on this visitor. Here is a series of different-colored Xanthosoma – ranging from a lime green, through a cultivar featuring deep purple stems to another entirely purple variety which absolutely stunned me with its deep purple tone and downright uniqueness. (Check out the reverse side of those gorgeous huge leaves and how they become a dustier “negative” of their reverse):

The velvety texture of the darker portion is hard to capture on camera, but it feels just as lush as it looks.

The fact is, the garden’s fascination with “Purpurea’s” of all types does not stop at those uncanny Xanthosomas. Here is a tiny set of purple Shamrocks –

Odder yet – and tons more purple – is this most surprising Mimosa Tree:

The Yew Dell Garden is a true delight. It’s a bit smaller than I had thought it would be but they manage to cram all sorts of fascinating, weird, wild and wonderful stuff into it in a riot of species, colors and form. We caught it at the onset of Autumn, so we missed a lot of some equally-unusual annuals and the perennials which had just pretty much finished doing their thing.

Frances at FaireGarden will appreciate their love of that gorgeous Muhley Grass, however, stuck as it is here at the entrance to the place –

Fearless, experimental and plain fascinating, sculptures are sporadically placed around the Gardens in auspicious spots as well.

I was particularly taken with The Hand – the sculpture which opened up this post at the top. It’s stark posturing in the middle of a wide expanse of grass just speaks volumes to the unique perspective this gorgeous and interesting garden exudes in so many ways:

Here’s a walkway through some pruned Holly Trees, hard by those purple Xanthosomas and another sculpture. Like I said – the interesting stuff just doesn’t quit.

I confess to my own bias – I am also fascinated with purple as a garden color for some strange reason – and maybe that’s it – the strangeness. But Yew Dell certainly has it in abundance, combined with other slices of absolute uniqueness.

Color everywhere – even in Fall – this garden is well worth anyone’s visit. Eccentric gardens are not that unusual in North America. I know a family in British Columbia who once made themselves a small retreat out of Rhododendrons and Azaleas which got bigger than themselves. Some of these places are now parks people gladly pay to visit in season. Yew Dell, motivated by a nurser and handy man with resources has become every bit of that.

Thanks for coming along!

Making A Somewhat Formal Waterfall

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Steve

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…………

My good and hard-working friend Rick Barrett analyzes his most recent impossible situation, looking for clues. We got a call from a designer in Portland who designed this most interesting water feature from the comfort of her drawing board. While we agreed it would be a beautiful edifice, we also wondered just how we’d pull it off. The notion of hanging the deep black slate, composed of various thicknesses but the same color, off a block cement wall posed some bizarre and – to us – new material. It would have to be cement, owing to the varied thicknesses of the slate. All sort of adhesives could do the job, but the thickness thing hung us up. We needed a material which would allow us some “squeeze room” in order to have the absolutely perfect outer dimensions to align. Anything other than perfection – with water flowing over it – would show up like crazy. And this referred not only to the top lip, where it would be grievous if not straight, but the front and sides as well.

Of course, I neglected to mention that the plan also called for adding real rocks at the front and a corner of both levels of the falls system, making the cement idea even more emphatically needed.

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So we arrived at a conclusion – erect the walls first, then nail burlap to the block walls, which would give the cement something to grab onto. It would also allow us just enough “wiggle room” to align all the slabs of slate so that they matched at every possible angle. Now, inasmuch as we are working with a natural stone product, total perfection would be absurd, layered and split as they are. But I believe Rick got very, very close.

He’s a working dude! 😉

I missed many episodes, picture-wise, as the construction proceeded, which I now regret. Often, we were busy elsewhere from the rear of the home, working on the landscaping out front or one the sides, which involved irrigation and the construction of some garden carpentry projects. Rick did almost every bit of the water feature by himself. He also – it bears mentioning – erected the stone walls. I thought his work was masterful and so did the client and even the designer.

The blue tarp, for the record, was not only handy for preventing the brick walls from getting splashed with wet cement or from the splatter from the debris of brick and stone-cutting, but it also doubled as a “rain roof”, keeping the guys and the stuff dry.

Generally speaking, here it is on the day we pretty much left, all done up and proper.

Quite a change from the first shots…………..note the stones – and not only the Basalt Chrystal cemented around using that “exposed aggregate” concrete finish. Note as well the insertion of natural stones by the bottom basin as well, sort of stuck into the patio floor finish. It added a natural touch. The patio is also cantilevered over the water, allowing us to hide the water pump which sits in the bottom basin. There is far more to this project than meets the eye, I guess is what I am saying.