|
Preservation Case Study: A Private Steele (and Shipman) Garden In spring 2004 members of the Milton, Massachusetts, Garden Club learned there were plans afoot to demolish and redevelop on the twelve-acre former estate of Philip and Katherine Spalding. They stepped in rapidly to preserve the charming, if neglected, formal garden on the northwest corner of the lot, which was built between 1924 and 1932. “This was an historic property, at one time the grandest in town, and its garden had been commissioned by our third president, Katherine Spalding,” says Meredith Hall, the 2005 club president. At the time, Hall and other garden club members were not aware that the garden was principally designed by Fletcher Steele (1885–1971), one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated landscape architects. But after touring the garden, a club member recalled reading about it in Robin Karson’s book Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect. The association with Steele raised the stakes of the preservation effort. “Because of Karson’s book we were able to make the case to the town planning board that the garden was worthy of preserving,” Hall says. The club negotiated with the developer to spare the half-acre garden if another buyer could be found. They approached the planning board with a request to deed the property to the Milton Land Trust or to the town. Instead, the board “asked us to buy the property, because of our visible track record with civic beautification projects in the community,” Hall recalls. Although it had never acquired property before, as a charitable and educational organization and an affiliate of the Garden Club of America, Milton Garden Club was legally positioned to do so. The developer, Tom Corcoran, transferred the deed to the garden club for one dollar in November 2004. Judith B. Tankard, author of The Gardens of Ellen Biddle Shipman, was contacted for advice, and she recalled that Shipman (1869–1950) had also been commissioned to work for the Spaldings in 1924. (Shipman often worked on planting details in frameworks designed by other landscape architects.) The club has not determined whether the Shipman design, or portions of it, was ever realized. More evidence exists for the Steele design. The Spalding garden was one of more than two dozen commissions in Milton over the course of Steele’s career, and, according to Karson’s biography, it was substantial: Spalding was president of New England Telephone and Telegraph, and this estate would be the grandest in Milton. Karson notes that Steele’s scheme for the Spaldings’ Georgian Revival mansion differed from his other work from this period “in its sobriety and lack of historical reference. . . . Its restrained character was abstract, almost industrial.” Hall reports that portions of the garden, including the brick paths and the eight-foot brick walls defining the bowling green and rose garden, remain structurally intact. But many elements are now gone, such as the tennis court, the elms, the bosquet, and the original roses, and invasive species have overrun the perennial beds. Only the patio, which lay outside the kitchen on the building’s west wing, remains to reveal the garden’s original connection to the Spalding house. But even in the present condition, the garden is widely admired for its soft-edged beauty. “Because there are so few extant gardens that were designed by Steele—and fewer still open to the public—the Spalding project is a great opportunity,” Karson observes. “Kudos to the Milton Garden Club for seizing the moment and saving this property.” The Milton Garden Club will decide how to interpret the garden and allow that to determine plans for rehabilitation. “One option is to do repairs and maintain it as a garden ruin,” Hall says. “We will definitely use the garden to educate the public about garden history and native plantings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean restoring it to its original state.” Hall says that despite her club’s affiliation with the Garden Club of America, whose broader mission is “to restore, improve, and protect the quality of the environment through programs and action in the field of conservation, civic improvement, and education,” it is unusual for a garden club to own property. But the connection is harmonious: Steele was the first male member of the Garden Club of America, which is how he met many of his clients. (See related article.) Photographs: |
