A Glimpse Of The Garden

By Nancy K. Crevier

“A Glimpse Of The Garden” is a series focusing on the heart of a gardener’s work — a special spot, an extraordinary plant, a place of respite, or a place that evokes a heartfelt memory. What is down the garden path of your friends and neighbors? What is down your garden path?

Like many gardeners, Barbara and Howard Gorham’s home is surrounded by a myriad of gardens of all different shapes, filled with flowers of all different kinds that reflect the shady or sunny spot in which they are planted. But of all of the gardens that sweep about her house and frame the yard, Ms Gorham, a member of the Town and Country Garden Club, is most taken with a section that she calls “Garry’s Garden.”

Garry’s Garden started out with just three kousa dogwoods and a pine tree, all barely more than sticks, said Barbara Gorham of her special garden. “About ten years ago, ‘The Tree Lady’ at Middle Gate School, where I taught, was giving out trees and as a teacher, I received these. I didn’t know quite what to do with them, so I just stuck them in at the back of the property, wherever they would go,” recalled Ms Gorham.

Then her granddaughter, Mary, suggested one day that a “little garden to make it all look nicer” would be a good idea for the area where the trees were growing. And Mary knew just the guy to do it — her dad, Garry Ober, who then owned Burr Garden on Obtuse Road in Brookfield.

“Garry cleaned it all up. It was a mess and quite a job. The area was filled with rocks and weeds,” said Ms Gorham. By the time her son-in-law was finished, the pine tree and dogwoods were anchoring a lovely garden filled with grasses, Japanese maple, ferns, astilbe, Montauk daisies, iris, bleeding hearts, and other flowering plants to give a succession of blooms throughout the year.

“We’re really blessed,” Ms Gorham said. “It’s a lovely little oasis in our yard.”

Over the years, she has added another component to Garry’s Garden; angel statuary that represent her 12 grandchildren. Scattered within that garden, as well as several others, the angels pout, smile, read, and even blow kisses as they keep company to the other statuary and nearby plants.

One angel, wearing an ankle bracelet that reads “For All of Our Sisters’ Keepers,” overlooks a low-growing mint plant with variegated leaves, a gift from a fellow book club member after the group had finished the Jodi Picoult book, My Sister’s Keeper. “It was such a sweet thing to do,” said Ms Gorham, “and I do think of her every time I see it.”

The garden gives them a great deal of pleasure, she said, whether viewed while lounging by the nearby pool, or while enjoying the patio at the back of the house. The only problem with Garry’s Garden she said, is of her own making.

“I can’t stop putting things into it. It was supposed to be a maintenance-free garden, but I just keep adding to it.”

That is what is down the garden path at Barbara and Howard Gorham’s.