Preservation as a Tool for Discovery

I am the first to admit that gardens exist in multiple realities. We read about gardens, plan them out on graph paper, drool over them in glossy publications, remember them from our childhood, even imagine them in our dreams. Many of my favorite (sometimes even heated) conversations with friends and colleagues are about gardens. Increasingly, as our culture seems ever more seduced by new technologies, we are introduced to gardens near and far by both amateurs and professionals aided by cellphones, video cameras, or even drones. All of these are good ways to think about, honor, and celebrate gardens.

But none of these activities can ever compare with visiting a garden.

While recently re-reading Andrea Wulf’s excellent book Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation, I was reminded that it was in Wulf’s writing that I first learned that Thomas Jefferson, on an unsuccessful trade mission to London, had left the city on April 2, 1786, to join, as Wulf tells us, “hordes of tourists who traveled the length and breadth of the country to visit England’s landscape gardens.” Visiting gardens and identifying notable gardens as worthy destinations are fine (and ancient) traditions. Included in the seven wonders of the ancient world, along with the pyramids, were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Unlike the pyramids, the.

Twenty-five years ago, the Garden Conservancy began partnering with gardeners in New York and Connecticut to open their private gardens and welcome other garden enthusiasts on an “Open Day.” A national garden visiting program was born. Long before the advent of the “pop-up” event, these carefully scheduled visiting opportunities made a private garden almost public, but just for one day. It was, in all honesty, a rather improbable proposition. Its success is a testament to the passion and generosity of gardeners. One of the things that I love best treasure hunt or a festival; if it rains, or if you have a conflict that day, you’re out of luck until next year…. or maybe not! Some gardens return year after year, and others close the gates. Like gardens themselves in which a rose may bloom beautifully.

A defining characteristic that all gardens share is that they are a creation of human beings. In one way or another, someone has drawn a conceptual line around that special “moment” in the wider landscape that is the “garden.” Irrespective of how we endeavor to blur the line between the man-made and the natural, gardens always delight us precisely because they are “artifice.” They often tell us as much (if not more) about the gardeners who created them as they do about the plants, trees, etc., that first draw our attention. This commemorative book introduces you to some of those gardeners and their stories.

The Garden Conservancy recently reaffirmed that the Open Days program is central to our mission. We will continue to work hard to offer opportunities to visit private gardens, hear from experts, see and explore parts of public gardens that are rarely accessible, to learn about garden history and I am delighted to mark this important milestone in the Garden Conservancy’s beloved Open Days program with this beautiful publication, the culmination of a year’s efforts to explore and celebrate the gardens and the people who have made Open Days possible. In the process, we hope we have also captured, in the portraits that follow, the spirit of the program. The book has come together with a great deal of excitement, Beautiful drawings from our good friend, artist, and aesthete Marian McEvoy, whose lovely hillside garden overlooks the Hudson River, grace the cover and pages of this book. Inspired by gardens she has visited around the world, Marian creates gardens on paper, using pen and ink, and also in delightful collages of pressed flowers and leaves the world, Marian creates gardens on paper, using pen and ink, and also in delightful collages of pressed flowers and leaves..

Photographers Brian Jones and Christine Ashburn traveled across the country last year to capture intimate portraits of passionate volunteers who open their own gardens and search out new gardens for our Open Days visitors t

Great credit and thanks also go to our communications and Open Days staff members, who created this important commemorative book based on an idea that I proposed barely twelve months ago. Graphic designer Kat Nemec embraced the idea of the project, working tirelessly and with great good humor to lend her careful and joyous aesthetics to the finished product.

I would be remiss were I to ignore that, as I write this, our world has changed radically. We are celebrating 25 years of the joy of visiting gardens at the very moment that a global pandemic prevents us from doing just that. However, it is the essence of gardens that they remind us of the passage of time and of the promise of a seasonal rebirth. I write these words with every confidence that not only will we return soon to the wonderful adventure and discovery that is an Open Day, but that gardens, and gardening, will show us the way to a brighter and healthier future.

Come join us in the garden!

James Brayton Hall President and CEO