Japanese Garden Honors NVCC Professor

By Nancy K. Crevier

Newtown resident Regina DelRossi has found a way to blend her love of art and a previously earned degree in prearchitecture into her newest pursuit of a degree in horticulture and landscape design at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury. This spring, under the guidance of horticulture instructor Robert Herman, Ms DelRossi designed and installed a Japanese memorial garden near the college’s new greenhouse on campus.

“Every student has to take a cooperative class covering something that they wouldn’t get in the classroom,” said Mr Herman, Monday, May 17, as he viewed the newly installed garden. “I knew Regina from my Landscape I class, and I knew this project would be a way for her to use her talent and knowledge. This seemed like the best fit,” he said.

The garden is a memorial to one of Ms DelRossi’s former instructors, Professor Eugene Wisniewski — informally known to students as “Mr W” — who passed away suddenly last October. An instructor of landscape maintenance and Landscape Design II, Prof Wisniewski was instrumental in the building of the new greenhouse, said Mr Herman.

“Mr W had mentioned that he would like to see a Japanese garden here,” Mr Herman said, so he suggested it to Ms DelRossi.

“I started the design in late January, and we planted it in early May,” Ms DelRossi said. The Japanese garden involved a great deal of research in exploring the many symbols and plants traditionally involved in a Japanese garden. “I tried to steer away from the expected, like bamboo. I wanted to incorporate plants native to our area that would resemble those used in Japan, but will do well here,” she said. As a painter, she also thought in “painterly” terms of colors, structure, and texture in the garden.

“What you’re looking at is a landscape in miniature,” explained Mr Herman, “which is different from the style of memorial gardens in general. They are usually laid out in a more formal manner. This is nature and vegetation that offers an oasis in the midst of glass and steel and brick.”

The memorial garden is bordered on two sides by college buildings, on one side by a fence overlooking a lower level of the campus, and on the other side by a pathway bridging the new Technology Hall and the greenhouse. Ms DelRossi had to take into consideration the many vantage points from which the garden would be viewed when designing the garden. “We have offices above looking down, as well as views from the sides as people pass by in the hallways or between buildings,” she said.

Japanese gardens always include certain elements, said Ms DelRossi. “There is always water and mountains, or representations of them. There is an age element, as the Japanese believe strongly that ‘Age is Wisdom.’ I used plants that are attractive year around, as a Japanese garden is meant to be viewed in all seasons,” she said.

Looping from one corner of the garden to an adjacent edge is a “waterway” of river stone, representing the water element.

“It wasn’t possible to actually put in running water in this garden, so I had to go with something representational,” said Ms DelRossi. The stone “river’ culminates wrapped about the base of one of the age elements in the garden, a granite Rankei lantern, originally from Japan, positioned to hang over the “water” where it would typically reflect. “The lantern is made of granite, a stone that will last a long time and age over time,” explained Ms DelRossi.

“A Japanese garden is meant to be viewed in all seasons, so the wide, flat top of this lantern that Regina selected will gather snow on top in the winter. When looked down upon from above, it will look like a flower,” Mr Herman said.

The “mountains” are three large boulders wrestled from a Plymouth, Conn., construction site and maneuvered into the upper level campus garden with a small Bobcat front loader. “I needed two horizontal boulders and one vertical boulder for the mountainous look, so finding just what I wanted took some searching through all of the rocks,” said Ms DelRossi. Several smaller rocks scattered about the garden, crowned with moss, came from her home garden, and a plot of Irish moss plugs will develop into a smooth, continuous ground cover eventually. Moss is also an age element, Ms DelRossi said.

The plants include a Seven Suns flowering tree that adds structure to the scene, she said, and when the leaves drop in autumn, the tan exfoliating bark will add interest to the garden. An Orangeola dwarf Japanese maple “shows beautiful structure when the leaves fall, and the dark red leaves turn a brilliant red-orange in fall,” Ms DelRossi said.

Broadleaf evergreens include azaleas, creeping wintergreen, and dwarf Pieris. Creeping juniper plants offer low ground cover and textural variety. Sprouting along the “riverbed” are lady’s mantle and astilbe, with cutleaf dwarf goat’s beard growing alongside.

The astilbe and azaleas will bloom in shades of red, a color used frequently in Japanese culture, and will be balanced by the white blossoms of the goat’s beard later this spring.

Installing a garden is not inexpensive, so Ms DelRossi is grateful for monetary donations from faculty and community, as well as for funds raised from the sales of greenhouse plants that benefited the memorial garden. The Connecticut Cactus and Succulent Society provided funding for the granite lantern, and she is pleased to have been able to purchase many of the plants locally through Planters’ Choice on Huntingtown Road in Newtown.

“We will be putting in benches so that anyone who wants to can stop here to reflect on the garden, and we still have some mulching to do. I felt very fondly toward Mr W,” said Ms DelRossi. “I enjoyed his character, and I’m pleased with the result.”

“This memorial garden is appropriate to Mr W. Even people who didn’t know him will get a sense of what he found important,” said Mr Herman. “A garden like this is timeless.”

A dedication of the garden will take place in the fall.

The Professor Eugene Wisniewski Japanese Memorial Garden is located between the new Technology Hall building and the greenhouse at Naugatuck Valley Community College, 750 Chase Parkway, Waterbury.