The John Fairey Garden Hempstead, TX

Brujería is the traditional folk magic of Mexico. In addition to stories, spirits, spells, and spiritual cleansing, there is an element of alchemy: the turning of natural substances into other substances.

John Fairy was an alchemist, and to that extent, a brujo. Using elements of the Mexican and southwestern flora, he made a one-of-a-kind garden. Like all gardens, it took more than wizardry to create an experience, BUT it was no less magical. The John Fairey Garden (renamed from Peckerwood Garden to honor its recently deceased founder), makes political and other boundaries disappear with the sleight-of-hand of horticulture.

The saying “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper,” has been attributed to Irish poet W.B. Yeats (1865 – 1935). Fairey was adept at recognizing those enchantments and using them to conjure a new reality. The Texas garden has the United States’s premier collection of plants from Mexico in its holdings, with plants from other countries that are suitable bedfellows.

A true plantsperson’s garden since its very beginning, the John Fairey Garden sprang from its founder’s artistic talent and the passion for horticultural exploration—and an eye for both. In addition to being trained as a painter and teaching design to architects for decades, Fairey, the plant explorer, made over 100 trips into Mexico to search out little-used or unknown plant material suitable for gardens of the Southwest.

Fairey’s goal was to create a cultural bridge between Mexico and the United States and to highlight the richness of the horticultural heritage of the region—and the threat to its continued existence in either country. As a result, the garden is internationally known for its collection of rare and endangered plants and is home to important collections of Mexican and Texan natives, oaks, Mahonia, and woody lilies (Agave, Manfreda, Yucca, and related taxa). Its work has been called “monumentally important” to botany and horticulture.

Collectors’ gardens are notoriously difficult from a design perspective. Often they are defined by the “drifts of one” concept. Artists’ gardens are often no more comprehensible. “They have to remake the world around them,” says landscape architect Mark Kane in the foreword to the book Artists in Their Gardens by Valerie Easton and David Laskin. It is especially significant then, that among his many national awards for horticultural excellence, Fairey was the recipient of the 2016 Place Maker Award from the Foundation for Landscape Studies.

Fairey’s love of art remains part of the equation. Amid the thousands of specimens of plants, is a collection of distinctive sculptures. He also amassed a significant collection of Mexican folk art and donated a portion, over 400 pieces, to the Art Museum of Southeast Texas.

The Garden Conservancy was involved early in its existence to assist in the transition to a public garden and helped form the Peckerwood Garden Conservation Foundation, a nonprofit organization to own and operate it. Over the years, the Garden Conservancy has provided guidance and resources to the John Fairey Garden Conservation Foundation (the garden’s current owner), and continues to steward the conservation easement it holds, which protects the garden in perpetuity. Most recently, the Garden Conservancy awarded a Gardens for Good grant to the John Fairey Garden for ongoing management and protection of the collection.

Even if plants could recognize boundaries, the John Fairey Garden magically erases them, combining disparate elements from botany, horticulture, landscape architecture, design, culture, art, and geography, into a transcendent whole. In the process—and for all of us—it creates a limpia, a spiritual cleansing that clears negative energy from body, emotions, mind, and soul.

The Garden Conservancy is deeply grateful to our lead donors:

Suzanne & Ric Kayne

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• • and to the generous sponsors of this publication:

Ms. Rise S. Johnson

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Ms. Mary V. Buckingham

Mr. Scott L. Byron

Mr. Ronald L. Fleming

Ms. Dorian Goldman & Mr. Marvin Israelow

Suzy Wetzel Grote

Ms. Marlena C. Heydenreich

Barbara Israel Garden Antiques

Joseph Marek & John Bernatz

Mr. & Mrs. Spencer S. March III

Ms. Katherine Nelson

Mr. & Mrs. Rodman Ward, Jr.

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Ms. Patricia Elias & Mr. Michael Rosenfeld

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Carolyn & Jamie Bennett

Ms. Bettie Bearden Pardee

Special thanks also to our lead donors to the Suzanne & Frederic Rheinstein Garden Documentation Program:

Mrs. Frederic Rheinstein

Mrs. Susan Zises Green

Philip & Shelley Belling

Mr. & Mrs. Terrence D. Daniels

Gilbert P. Schafer III & the Elisha-Bolton Foundation

Suzanne & Ric Kayne

With additional support from:

Mr. & Mrs. Robert M. Balentine

Mrs. Walter F. Ballinger II

Brittain Bardes Damgard

Constance M. Goodyear Baron & Barry C. Baron

Ms. Ritchie Battle

Mr. & Mrs. Mogens C. Bay

Carolyn & Jamie Bennett

Ms. Heather Bland

Mr. & Mrs. Franklin O. Booth III

Ms. Emily R. Boyle

Mr. & Mrs. Alexander Brodsky

Mr.* & Mrs. Coleman P. Burke

Mr. & Mrs. F. Colin Cabot

Mr. & Mrs. Edmund M. Carpenter

Mr. & Mrs. Alan B. Clark

Mrs. James Connelly

Mrs. Anne Crawford de Zonia

Ms. Page Dickey & Mr. Francis Schell

Mr. & Mrs. Coburn D. Everdell

Mr. & Mrs. William H. Fain, Jr.

Mr. & Mrs. Richard D. Field

Dr. & Mrs. John W. Given

Mr. & Mrs. Lionel Goldfrank III

Mr. & Mrs. Richard T. Grote

Mr. James Brayton Hall

Mrs. William Hamilton

Dr. & Mrs. Douglas Hampson

Dr. & Mrs. Kenton Horacek

Ms. Rise S. Johnson

Mr. & Mrs. Thomas F. Kranz

Mr. Glen Lajeski & Mr. Gerry Etcheverry

Mr. & Mrs. Benjamin F. Lenhardt, Jr.

Susan & Glenn Lowry

Joseph Marek & John Bernatz

Mr. & Mrs. Spencer S. March III

Mr. David C. Martin

Ms. Janet Mavec & Mr. E. Wayne Nordberg

Mr. & Mrs. J. Patterson McBaine

Mr. & Mrs. Joseph H. McGee

Ms. Charlotte Moss

Mrs. Bettie Bearden Pardee

Mr. & Mrs. Robert M. Penfold

Mrs. Sarah F. Perot

Ms. Renvy G. Pittman

Mr. Trevor Potter

Mr. & Mrs. Steven M. Read

Mr. Paul Redman & Mr. Dean Berlon

Mrs. Varner H. Redmon

Ms. Katie Ridder & Mr. Peter Pennoyer

Mr. & Mrs. Richard Roeder

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew C. Rose

Ms. Patricia Elias & Mr. Michael Rosenfeld

Mrs. Elizabeth B. Ruprecht

Mrs. Daniel P. Ryan

Mr. & Mrs. Howard G. Seitz

Elizabeth C.B. & Paul G.* Sittenfeld

Mr. & Mrs. Andrew P. Steffan

Merrielou H. Symes

Mr. & Mrs. J. Taft Symonds

Mr. Dana Scott Westring

Ms. Bunny Williams & Mr. John Rosselli

*Deceased

The Garden Conservancy’s work to help preservation efforts at gardens across America has been recognized with a number of external awards, including:

2020 Olmsted Medal American Society of Landscape Architects

2012 Medal for Historic Preservation The Garden Club of America

2012 Heritage Award Royal Oak Foundation

2009 Trustees’ Award for Organizational Excellence National Trust for Historic Preservation

2009 Trustees’ Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation

2009 Preservation Design Award California Preservation Foundation

Garden Conservancy founder Frank Cabot was also the recipient of numerous awards from horticultural societies, many of which cited the garden preservation work he initiated through the Garden Conservancy.

Sylvester Manor, on Shelter Island, NY, has a long and storied history. Once a Native American hunting, fishing, and farming ground, it has been home to eleven generations of its original European settler family since 1651. Over time, Sylvester Manor has been transformed from a plantation with both indentured and enslaved staff, to an Enlightenment-era farm, to a pioneering food industrialist’s estate. Today, Sylvester Manor is an organic educational farm that preserves and tells the stories of its land and all of its people through interpretive programming for all ages.