Rooted in History

With structure and plants, Barbara Burgum has created a garden to complement her Arts and Crafts style house.

Story and photos by Gail Brown Hudson

Minnetonka landscape earns national recognition.

FILLED WITH THE PLANTS WE LOVE, our living gardens evolve through time, changing from day to day, season to season, year to year. “[Gardening] is just endlessly fascinating,” says Barbara Burgum, a retired landscape architect who tends 2 acres of extensive perennial, vegetable, rain and prairie gardens on the shores of Lake Minnetonka in the Twin Cities. “I’m so lucky to have the free time to do it and to be able to indulge my passion.”

With great care, a special garden like Barbara’s can be captured in a moment in time and preserved for future generations who might learn from it. Just a few months ago, Barbara found out that her contemporary landscape would join a handful of Minnesota gardens included in the Garden Club of America archives at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “It’s a huge honor,” she says. “Gardening is an art form that’s so ephemeral and really, if you don’t document it, it can disappear.”

Why This Garden?

“It’s been so thoughtfully put together, it’s just wonderful,” says Emily Johnson, who is one of several members of the Lake Minnetonka Garden Club who helped bring about the national recognition. For the past year and a half, the garden club team worked to satisfy the Smithsonian’s stringent requirements by documenting the garden. That included researching the

property’s historical land ownership, gathering maps and drawings of the landscape design, and taking photographs of the Burgum garden throughout the growing season.

Emily remembers seeing the garden for the first time about five years ago. “I just was blown away by it,” she says. “It was breath-taking. I couldn’t believe how pretty it was.”

Historic Roots, Clean Lines

One of the qualities of the garden that makes it worthy of such recognition, Emily says, are its clean lines. The Deephaven landscape surrounds an Arts and Crafts house built in 1905 for James Flett Cargill, who was a brother of the founder of the Cargill family grain storage business. The sprawling lake cottage was featured in the book, Legendary Homes of Lake Minnetonka (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2005) by Bette Hammel as one of Lake Minnetonka’s coveted properties. “It’s on such a great site,” Barbara says. “I’m very attached to it!”

Barbara bought and began to restore the house in 1999, then tackled its surroundings nine years later—the “icing” to the project, she called it. A row of Annabelle hydrangeas in front of the house echo the elongated, slanted roof lines, and set the stage for views out kitchen windows of a large pergola, perennial sun and shade gardens, and low, fieldstone retaining walls.

“The perennials are amazing,” says Emily. “You stand in that kitchen … and you look right out across to the garden that’s full of interesting plant material.”

Perennial Impact

A few stone steps up to the garden, the entrance of a brick path is marked by chubby stones standing on end or “fat boys,” as Barbara calls them. “They’re so eccentric and charming.” The walk heads in several directions, taking visitors past large beds of perennials in sun, then shade, which have been carefully chosen to create interest from early spring through fall.

In August, the garden path bursts with yellows and rose colors.

Below: Twilight lilies (Lilium tsingtauense) and hakone grass line a fence; Barbara Burgum in her garden. Bottom: Astrantia in the sun garden; daisies bloom in June.

Top: Two boulders flank the entry to a walkway. Above: Clematis viticella ‘Venosa Violacea’ climbs the pergola.

Barbara surveys her garden first thing in the morning in pajamas with a cup of coffee in hand. “I’m out there every day,” she says, evaluating the plant combinations for impact and vitality. She loves pairing purple moor grass (Molinia caerulea) with lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis). “Some plants have been moved so often that they come when they’re called,” she jokes. “They’re plants I love, but they’re hard to site.” The garden features Minnesota natives and cold-hardy specimens.

In early June, the garden glows with white and pink peonies, big stands of tall yellow bearded irises, vivid blue flag irises, wispy white alliums, dark beardtongue (Penstemon ‘Dark Towers’ PP20,013), pink wild geraniums and blue false indigo (Baptisia australis). Clematis vines of many colors have just begun to blossom on the wooden posts of the pergola, the main structural feature of the garden. “I wanted something that I could grow a lot of different vines up,” Barbara says. “It also created a pen to keep the deer out for precious things like lilies.”

By July, the bright pop of yellow coreopsis, orange blanket flower (Gaillardia), magenta bee balm (Monarda) and graceful pink astilbe dominate. In late summer, purple liatris, swaths

A Garden Archives

For a peek into gardens of the past, browse the Archives of American Gardens collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Established in 1987, the collection contains over 100,000 images—including thousands of hand-painted, glass lantern slides—as well as records that document the evolution of gardens throughout the United States.

The archives cover 4,500 gardens documented by The Garden Clubs of America from the 1920s to today. Currently, 28 Minnesota gardens are represented in the collection from the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska and Noerenberg Gardens in Wayzata to many private gardens. To view the archives, go to the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives: https://sova. si.edu/ and look for the “Archives of American Gardens” at the bottom of the page. Scroll down for “The Garden Clubs of America” collection, then click on the “Contents” tab and “United States Garden Images.” —G.B.H.

The pergola anchors the main garden and is alive with bloom in June.

“It entertains you— every day it’s different and stunning.”

In the swale, monarchs cling to Liatris.

of black-eyed Susans and Mexican sunflowers take center stage. This is the time of year, Barbara says, that the garden is at its best.

A Prairie Garden

On the lakeside, the garden slants dramatically down to the water. At the turn of the century, this was considered the front of the house since many people arrived by boat. It had been a grass lawn divided by many brick steps. “You couldn’t even walk on it,” she says. “It was terrifying to watch it being mown with a stand-up mower.”

Prairie Restorations converted the lawn to a garden of drought-tolerant, deep-rooted prairie plants to fill the area and enhance the lake view from the wrap-around porch. “It’s not a true prairie,” Barbara says. “I just wanted more flowers and I have allowed a few nonnatives in there.” She waters only when the surrounding oak trees are drought-stressed, “because these big oaks are so valuable to me.”

This garden was designed to provide seasonal punch, too. In spring, violets, golden Alexanders and meadowsweet explode, then a midsummer flush of orange and gold dazzles with butterfly weed, 11 different kinds of yellow daisies, lavender liatris, asters, blue false indigo and hardy phlox. By the fall, purples and yellows take over with coneflowers, joe-pye weed, blackeyed Susans and goldenrod.

“It entertains you—every day it’s different and stunning,” she says. “Lots of birds—hummingbirds—come and just work over the flowers.” Barbara has the area burned yearly to rejuvenate it. And yet, a hosta and a bearded iris have survived four rounds of mechanical sod stripping and fires. “I keep meaning to transplant them out of there, but they keep coming back,” she says.

Preventing Runoff

Barbara’s garden club members are also impressed by the water-retention areas built around the house, which catch rainwater that would otherwise wash down to the lake. “No gutters on the roof, so the runoff goes shooting off of it,” Barbara says.

Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) and tall pollinator-friendly plants camouflage a swale alongside the asphalt driveway, and concave areas on either side of walking paths collect water, too. “I try to stay on the paths and not compact the soil,” she says.

Right: Old-fashioned peonies remind visitors of the history of the house and garden. Far right: Lake Minnetonka and the prairie garden can be seen from the home’s porch.

The steep hill between Barbara’s house and the lake was planted with deep-rooted prairie plants, which add color and bring wildlife to the garden.

Foliage is King

As Barbara continues to perfect the garden, she focuses a critical eye on each plant. “I’ve learned from Frank [Fitzgerald] and Fred [Rozumalski],” she says, two friends who are prominent landscape architects in the Twin Cities. “It has to have fabulous foliage … rather than a showy bloom.”

The pair created the overall sustainable design of the gardens, helping Barbara choose hundreds of plants and lay out the paths and stone walls. Barbara, Frank and Fred “really enjoy the fabulous diversity” of plants, she says. “If you can see it at a gas station parking lot (like ‘Stella de Oro’ daylilies), it’s time to get it out of my garden!”

“I can remember seeing the most incredible purple berry and that’s a beautyberry bush (Callicarpa americana),” says Emily. “I’ve never seen anything so unusual and that’s just one of the many things that she has.”

Future Improvements

Barbara says her goal now is to simplify her garden, and she refuses to plant any troublemakers. “If Japanese beetles eat it, I rip it out,” she says. She doesn’t have time to deal with plants “that need to be in intensive care all the time.” If a plant dies, she says Frank puts an “X” in front of it and it drops to the bottom of their plant list. “If I get enticed by it, order it and kill it again, it gets two ‘Xs’ in front of it,” she says, laughing.

Barbara enjoys showing her garden to visitors, and now she can share it online with the global reach of the Smithsonian. And as her garden grows and matures, she continues to marvel at the nature outside her door. “You know the insects, the pollinators, the plants that thrive and the plants that slip away despite your best efforts,” she muses. “You could spend all day long learning.”

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