domingo, junio 06, 2004 :::
 
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Fuente: Press Herald online
Fecha: 9-5-04
Autora: STEPHANIE BOUCHARD


Legacies grow in historic gardens


Separated by 25 miles of salt waterways are the gardens of Celia Thaxter on Appledore Island and of Emily Tyson and Elise Tyson Vaughan at the Hamilton House in South Berwick.

Both gardens date to the 1800s and show the lavish attention these women of privilege devoted to designing and showcasing the landscape at their homes. In the case of Thaxter, her garden grew next to her coastal cottage. The grounds of the Hamilton house were adorned with perennials and native trees and shrubs.

Landscape gardener Nancy Wetzel, who has expertise in historic gardens, will talk about the two gardens and present a slide show today at the Portland Museum of Art. She will talk about how the gardens were reconstructed and restored, and how the gardens have been celebrated in art and literature.

In honor of Mother's Day and of the three women's contributions to Maine gardening, organizers will hand out free flowers from Harmon's & Barton's in Portland to the first 100 women to attend the program.

The historic gardens are a window to Maine society in the late 1800s. It was a time of great social and economic change. Just as today, the people of the 19th century looked to the past with nostalgia for a simpler time.

That yearning manifested itself, for some, through the creation of gardens that captured their romantic vision of what gardens of the colonial period looked like. They called these gardens old-fashioned or grandmother's gardens.

"They were really interested in making an abiding place where they could step out of time," says Wetzel.

During Celia Thaxter's lifetime, her garden was almost as famous as she was. It was so famous, in fact, that even after her death in 1894, people from the Appledore House Hotel maintained it because tourists came to the island expressly to see it.

But in 1914, Thaxter's cottage and garden and the hotel burned in a fire. It wasn't until the 1970s that the garden was revived when the founder of Shoals Marine Laboratory, John Kingsbury, decided to take a crack at reconstructing it.

Situated in a resort community, Thaxter's garden was very public. People walked by it all the time. Thaxter also ran a salon that drew artists and writers such as Childe Hassam and Sarah Orne Jewett. Thaxter's garden was their backdrop and is featured in many of their paintings, poems and writings. Hassam's paintings of Thaxter's garden are used as illustrations for Thaxter's book, "An Island Garden," written in 1893.

But, says Wetzel, Thaxter was known to point out that her garden was not just for show. She routinely was out in her garden at 5 in the morning, cutting flowers to put in her parlor, where at times there could be 150 blooms arranged throughout the room.

Emily Tyson of Boston and her stepdaughter Elise Tyson Vaughan bought Hamilton House in 1898 as a summer retreat. They threw themselves into restoring their home and its grounds and garden. The women often served tea and entertained guests in the garden. Over the years, the home and its garden were often written about and photographed. In 1929, House Beautiful magazine featured the house and its garden four times.

When Elise Tyson Vaughan died in 1949, Hamilton House was turned over to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities per her instructions. In the hands of SPNEA, the home and garden have undergone a restoration to bring them back to the spirit of the place in its heyday.

Celia Thaxter and the Tysons, says Wetzel, created legacies with their gardens. The art and literature that celebrate those gardens help perpetuate those legacies.

The reconstruction of Thaxter's garden and the restoration of the Hamilton House garden have brought their legacies back to life for the enjoyment of people today.







::: Noticia generada a las 4:53 PM