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Preservation Case Study: Longue Vue House & Gardens Two years after Hurricane Katrina blasted the Gulf Coast, residents find themselves in a landscape transfigured by the storm. Where winds and brackish floodwater claimed thousands of trees and other plants, the losses have spawned new microclimates and ecologies, as sun now blazes into spaces once sheltered by leafy canopies. Although such changes have reshaped private yards, public parks, and streetscapes alike, historic landscapes, such as that of Longue Vue House & Gardens in New Orleans, pose special recovery challenges. “Nature is resilient,” says Bonnie Goldblum, the property’s executive director. “It will come back in some places as it was before, and in some cases people are rethinking how the landscape should be changed to better withstand flooding.” But while those who own or manage more contemporary gardens are considering introducing flood-tolerant plants, “we at Longue Vue also have to protect and restore a historic landscape,” she says. Only months before Katrina struck, Goldblum had just finished a multiyear, $4-million landscape restoration of this eight-acre urban estate created by architects William and Geoffrey Platt, landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman, and horticulturist Caroline Dormon between 1939 and 1942. The project was orchestrated by Heritage Landscapes, a national firm specializing in historic properties. (LALH Executive Director Robin Karson contributed to the historic landscape report that helped guide the work.) The project had returned most of the estate’s eleven garden rooms to their original Shipman plans, and the U.S. Department of the Interior had designated Longue Vue a National Historic Landmark, in part because it contained Shipman’s most intact surviving work––that is, until September 2005. Although damage was widespread, the Wild Garden, the Canal Garden, the Walled Garden, and the Spanish Court, all on the property’s south side, took the brunt of the storm. “Prior to Katrina we were in maintenance and conservation mode. Now we’re rebuilding, and we have double the tasks,” Goldblum says, ticking through a list of projects that includes replacing the sod in the Oak Lawn, which perished under brackish floodwater and has been overtaken by weeds. “It takes a tremendous amount of physical labor and resources.” Posses of volunteers from local garden clubs and church groups, the Garden Club of Atlanta, and the Garden Conservancy, among other organizations, have lent hundreds of helping hands. The past year’s achievements include stabilizing the damaged irrigation system and replanting major trees and shrubs in the Wild Garden and the boxwood parterres in the Spanish Court. “The boxwoods are the major accomplishment,” says Goldblum. “We put in about eight hundred.” The Garden Conservancy, Heritage Landscapes, and Longue Vue have created a historic landscape–renewal plan that addresses post-Katrina restoration and recapturing Shipman’s tree tracery, texture, and palette. The renewal is based on Shipman’s original plan and design intent, the historic-landscape plans done in the 1990s by Heritage Landscapes, and Shipman documents recently uncovered at Longue Vue. Together they show the design as it existed in the mid-nineties and today, as well as changes that have taken place over the decades. The project focuses on replacing and caring for trees, understory shrubs, and ground covers; restoring views; and reintroducing the original grading in the Wild Garden. Shipman’s plantings were not always suited to the New Orleans climate. As they see what fared poorly in the wake of the flood, the landscape-renewal team has tried to find alternative plants that fit the design intent and maintain the integrity that earned National Historic Landmark status. The Wild Garden, which is home to native plants, will be given a freer rein than the formal gardens. “We just have to allow nature time to determine what will renew and what really has died,” Goldblum observes. “With certain trees missing, other indigenous plants are coming into their own. We have replaced many things, but the biggest challenge is still the unplanted areas where we need to put in temporary trees for shade.” Meanwhile, in a city starved for greenery, local visitors are returning, and Goldblum notes that they are using the grounds more contemplatively now than in the past, when they came mainly for structured activities such as the annual Easter egg hunt. “I think residents are yearning for green, relaxing outdoor space, and the gardens were a little intimidating in their manicured state,” she says. “Now it’s as though they’re more accessible.” (See related article.) Photographs: |
