Blog
The good garden blog is about sharing garden inspiration and ideas from historic gardens around the world and some right next door. Garden stories explore garden history, design, and the garden people behind famous and not-so-famous gardens. My garden photographs span dozens of places across 5 continents. Please join me in celebrating good garden design.
Gardens are continually evolving. Sometimes it is about fine-tuning, other times, a complete redesign is needed to reflect a new passion. The Giardino Bardini in Florence, Italy is a great example. What started as a medieval cloister garden became an Italian renaissance landscape and then an Anglo-Chinese garden...
Read More“The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built.” - Frank Lloyd-Wright Among the things that Wisconsin is famous for it is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, that has most intensely captured my attention...
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Photographs show what the garden looked like at different points in time. In front, the oldest photo shows the house surrounded by newly planted trees. By the 1910’s, these had matured and flowering shrubs were added. In the 1930’s, the house became a restaurant.
Hearthstone became a museum in 1986 after a grass-roots effort saved the building from its demolition.
Henry and Cremora Rogers built the home in 1882 for their family. Nationally recognized architect William Waters designed the home in the Queen Anne style.
The Magnolia Tree was planted by Harold and Ruth Mares, the last owners of the home from 1962-1986. Its spring blossoms are spectacular.
The garden plan includes a serpentine front bed. Here a portion is in the process of being laid out. This section shows how Buettner echoed the curving porch..
The shady front border has just been planted with several varieties of hosta.
Alyssum and petunias make a wonderful combination. These hard working annuals will bloom all season.
Great houses deserve great gardens. Hearthstone, built in the 1880’s, is an important historic treasure. It is a stunning, Queen Anne style home that was also a technological breakthrough - the first house in the world lit with an Edison central hydroelectric station. Thanks to the discovery of an old landscape plan, Hearthstone is about to get a new historically inspired garden...
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