Saying it with flowers
Kingsbrae Gardens was started 10 years ago as a way to give back to St. Andrews by some wealthy long-time residents. Today it is a sprawling much-loved 27-acre estate distinguished by its sense of humour. Story by Kate Wallace.
As the magnificent Kingsbrae Gardens in St. Andrews celebrates its 10th anniversary this summer, there's no better time to ask what makes the 27-acre horticultural haven so successful. Is it its collection of more than 50,000 plant varieties, including one of the world's rarest trees? The lovely old shingled buildings that dot the rolling property? Its friendly, knowledgeable staff?
No, says Maureen McIlwain, Kingsbrae's director of marking, it is the garden's sense of humour that sets it apart.
Although there is nothing overtly rib-tickling about the sprawling estate with its stunning views of Passamaquoddy Bay, there is a certain whimsy that permeates Kingsbrae's gardens and programs.
The children's fantasy garden is the most waggish section, with a big grass bed that kids are invited to jump on (the grass chair is being replanted), Mad Hatter's teapot trees made from twisted old cedars topped with pots overflowing with blooms; scarecrows in the shape of a mermaid and dark knight; small playhouses, including one with a living roof, another with a climbing wall outside and, inside, a portrait with the eyes cut out à la the haunted houses in Scooby Doo.
A sense of relaxed fun shows itself outside of the children's area. Guests are welcome to a game of croquet or bocce ball on the lawn. There is the edible garden that, in the third week of June, offered nibbles of lettuces and herbs, while unripe currants will mature over the summer, offering fall visitors a sweet treat.
"People feel free to just help themselves," McIlwain says.
The Scents and Sensibility Garden, designed for the visually impaired in cooperation with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, offers all guests a rich sensory experience, as each plant in the hip-high beds was chosen for its texture or its smell, from the citrus bouquet of lemon geranium and piney whiff of rosemary to the downy leaves of aptly-named lambs ear or rubbery nubs of sedum. Plaques give the plant's common and Latin names as well as the name in braille.
Then there are Kingsbrae's resident creatures, a pygmy goat named Dolly, who, lonely after two of her kind died last year of old age, is now kept company by alpacas Alice and Angelina, which Kingsbrae bought in November. The mother-daughter pair are almost due for their first shearing. In the bird cage, frisky bantam cocks share a red-shingled coop with a couple of pairs of peacocks, including two males who can sometimes be prompted to display their dazzling tail feathers with just a little bird-calling.
Unlike some of Canada's other well-known public gardens, which McIlwain describes as "touch-me-not," Kingsbrae encourages its visitors to move in close, smell the roses, and even touch or taste them, too.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the therapy garden adjacent to the Passamaquoddy Lodge nursing home. On a sunny Friday in June, a couple of elderly ladies in wheelchairs plant petunias, while a senior gentleman digs in the dirt.
"They pretty much leave the weeding to us," McIlwain says.
An adjacent organic vegetable garden relies on companion planting and crop rotation to keep the soil healthy. Some of the lettuces were salad-ready, while other vegetables, such as kale, squash and onions, will not be harvested until later in the season.
"The garden itself is therapy, watching something grow and nurturing it."
Kingsbrae Gardens began 12 years ago when Lucinda Flemer, who had long summered in the seaside resort town, and her husband, John Flemer, were looking for a project for the community.
Mrs. Flemer and her gardener Andreas Haun, now Kingsbrae's general manager, designed the ambitious public garden with the help of Fredericton landscape architect Daniel K. Glenn.
"They dreamed it, and it happened," McIlwain says.
Mrs. Flemer had spent her summers in St. Andrews, splitting her time between her parents' and grandparents' adjoining estates. Her parents' turn-of-the-century manor house, designed by Canadian architect Edward Maxwell, now houses Kingsbrae's gift shop and café, as well as a gallery of original art that opens onto a cosy backyard. It is decorated with pots of red geraniums in wrought-iron holders, in honour of Mrs. Flemer's late mother; the scarlet blooms were her favourite.
When the project began, the property had gone fallow and was carpeted with tall grass and wildflowers. Aside from eight acres of virgin Acadian forest, which were left in a natural state, the job of turning the remaining 19 acres of fields into gardens and pathways was done with simple tools such as wheelbarrows, shovels and hoes - and lots of elbow grease.
"A 27-acre anything is a huge job," McIlwain says.
The heavy backhoe that was brought in to dig two ponds for in-ground irrigation systems would have compacted the earth, destroying the soil's tilth.
"It blows my mind that it was almost entirely done by hand," McIlwain says.
The garden has always hired people widely considered unemployable, including locals who had had run-ins with the law.
In 1998, it opened on time and under budget.
Now it runs on a $1-million endowment fund established by the Flemers. The couple still return to St. Andrews every summer and, even though they travel extensively, they remain in close contact with the garden, sending faxes from cruise ships or calling from overseas to check in.
The garden employs around 50 people, from horticulturists and administrators to café and gift shop employees.
"It's quite a job keeping up with the weeding," McIlwain says.
The eight-acre forest requires much less care.
"If a tree falls, they leave it," she says.
This year, for Kingsbrae's 10th anniversary, the Flemers have put up a $10,000 cash prize. The winner will be drawn at the end of the season from visitors' ballots.
"The garden grew out of a wish to give something back," McIlwain says.
It is a tremendous gift.
Past the gravel drive, the entry pathway hints at the horticultural treats that lie beyond, including topiary-shaped planters dripping with annuals, and a tidy plot inspired by the famed white garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent.
On passing through the knot garden, where greenery is planted in the pattern of Celtic knots using different hued greenery, and the sweet-smelling rose garden, visitors step through a hole in the hedge into the breathtaking perennial garden. It is impossible to take in the sweeping banks of poppies, Irises, lupins, lilies and dianthus, to name just a few species, at once.
The rich, early summer nectar of tree peonies, roses and the last of this year's lilacs please human visitors and the abundant fat bees alike, the insects buzzing happily as they feed, audible over the subtle strains of recorded classical music.
"The gardens are planned so there is always colour, so that, as one perennial fades, another will be in bloom," McIlwain says.
Paths lead away to numerous themed areas, including the blue garden, the secret garden and the container garden. The walkway leads visitors past a bank of rhododendrons blooming in more than a dozen brilliant shades of orange and pink; under trellised arbours dripping with sunny clusters of flowing goldenchain trees; and through a cedar maze that leads to a labyrinth planted in woolly thyme.
For its culinary garden, Kingsbrae invited some of St. Andrews' top chefs to submit their favourite herb-based recipes, an incitement to visitors to perhaps visit their restaurants after touring the garden, McIlwain says, nibbling a piece of celery-flavoured lovage.
But Kingsbrae is more than just a pretty place.
"There is a point to everything, it's not just a display," McIlwain says.
Take the gravel garden, which she calls an "eco-statement."
For this unique rocky plot, the soil is covered with straw and cardboard boxes, with holes cut for the plants. This is covered with different kinds of gravel, while large monoliths add a sculptural element.
The gravel garden has never been watered, except by rain.
Before going green went mainstream, Kingsbrae was environmentally friendly. Instead of herbicides or pesticides, staff rely almost exclusively on non-chemical solutions, including organic gardening techniques and a live ladybug release most days in July and August to help control bugs. The garden produces "literally tons" of compost each year from its own clippings and from the Fairmont Algonquin hotel's kitchen waste.
Its many accolades attest to this ecological approach, including the Because Green Matters National Stewardship Award from Project EverGreen Canada, and designated a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary.
It has made other sorts of rankings, too. The garden was declared Attractions Canada's National Winner for Best Developed Outdoor Site in Canada in 2001, after just three years of operation, the same year it enjoyed a record 30,000 visitors, a number McIlwain is hoping to match this summer. In 2000, Kingsbrae was named one of the Top 10 public gardens in Canada, especially impressive considering it was just its second year.
Even now, the garden feels much more established than its age would suggest, in part because of the old cedar hedges that delineate different garden rooms. They also create a micro-climate that allows plants that shouldn't survive in this zone to thrive, protecting them from blustery winds off the bay and the region's harshest weather.
McIlwain points to a Japanese maple, with its distinctive deep purple-red leaves.
"They really shouldn't be here, but they are happy here."
More than once during a two-hour tour, McIlwain meanders off the path to pull out the rare weed or pick a dead blossom from a plant, one time proffering a luscious plate-sized pink poppy the colour of bubble gum with a dusty black centre that had a snapped stem.
She says she always feels bad on those days when she gets too busy with office work to take the time to walk the grounds.
Besides the plants, trees and shrubs are interesting man-made features. A working one-third scale windmill that draws water up from the lower pond into an irrigation canal is a nod at Mr. Flemer's Dutch background.
Seven huge cast iron and blown glass sculptures dot the property. Created by Don Pell, they were part of a 2005 exhibition in which 28 of his works were scattered around the garden.
A couple of large sculptures on loan from the Beaverbrook Art Gallery decorate the rolling lawn that stretches out from the café's brick patio, down towards a work-in-progress sculpture garden, where a moribund oak tree is hung with some 300 cowbells that clink and clatter in the wind. McIlwain says there are plans to mow paths and create nooks in the surrounding meadow as the sculpture collection grows.
Kingsbrae's regular season runs from Victoria Day to Thanksgiving, although it does hold out-of-season events. Last year, the garden's Brats and Brews event in late October, part of Indulge, the town's annual three-day fall festival of food, art and music, was a sold-out success, and staff plan to hold the sausage and beer party again this autumn.
Not just a place to visit, the garden became a living classroom earlier this year when its first class of horticulture students began Kingsbrae's private program in March.
Instructor Theresa Maliszewski, out with her students for their weekly "what's in bloom" tour, stopped to chat about how she came from her native New England to develop the program. She first visited Kingsbrae a few years ago when she was in town with her daughter, who was studying opera with New Brunswick soprano Wendy Nielsen.
When she beheld the garden, it was love at sight.
"I went and said, 'Gee, I wish I could work here,' because this is what I want to do for the rest of my life," she says. "A place like this is paradise."
Kate Wallace covers the arts for the Telegraph-Journal and is a frequent contributor to Salon.
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