Homes And Gardens Tour Will Offer

Old World Style, Historic Homes And Gracious Gardens

By Shannon Hicks

There are treasures and surprises to be found inside the front doors and beyond the gates of many homes in Newtown, and most people never have the opportunity to see these gems. Homes and gardens that have been selected for previous tours — whether sponsored by Newtown Historical Society for its summer offering, Family Counseling Center for its annual Holiday Festival walking tour, or even the kitchens highlighted in recent years by Newtown Residential Preservation Society, among other organizations — have generally delighted tour participants of all ages.

This year’s crop of homes and gardens selected by the historical society is no different. Seven homes plus two gardens have been selected for the event, which was missed last summer but returns this month on Saturday, June 23. The 2007 Historical Society House & Garden Tour will run from 11 am to 4:30 pm rain or shine. New resident and recent historical society member Andrea Macaluso is chairman of the event.

This is a self-guided tour. Tickets are $20 each and can be purchased during regular library hours at Cyrenius H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street; Drug Center Pharmacy, 61 Church Hill Road; and The Red Garage, 78 South Main Street.

If tickets are still available on the day of the tour, they will be sold between 10 am and 12:30 pm at the Matthew Curtiss House, 44 Main Street. Call 426-5937 for more information.

The proceeds from this tour benefit Newtown Historical Society. Funds are used to maintain the circa 1750 Matthew Curtiss House Museum and to support the society’s education programs.

The Homes

The historic home of Cristina and Derek Arnold, at 34 Taunton Hill Road, is on property originally owned by David Sherman, who built a house there in 1768. That house burned and the present Colonial post-and-beam dwelling was built in 1805, with some additions at later dates.

The Arnolds bought the house in 2001 and have since added a beautifully designed gourmet kitchen and a spacious family room that keep the integrity of the antique farmhouse while enhancing the livability for a family of today. The house is surrounded by a picket fence, stone walls, and mature trees. A flagstone patio in the rear overlooks the garden, which features a gazebo where the Arnolds were married.

At the opposite end of the history spectrum is the home of Marcia and Lawrence Cavanaugh, who purchased a brand-new construction nine years ago. The Cavanaughs’ home, at 42 Greenleaf Farms Road, is a Toll Brothers construction with ten rooms including four bedrooms and 3½ baths.

“We have a pond, and five acres of land, so we get a lot of woodland creatures in our yard,” said Mrs Cavanaugh, who valiantly continues to tend gardens on her property. “My garden is really geared toward anti-deer plants, but there are some that both I like [visually] and the deer like.”

The home’s living room is comfortably appointed with a collection of hand painted Russian boxes depicting Russian folk tales, antique doilies, and historic paintings. When they moved to Newtown, the couple also brought with them Mrs Cavanaugh’s growing collection of roosters.

“I started collecting roosters long before we moved to Newtown and knew about the town’s theme,” she said, “but we fit right in with our collection.”

Many of the roosters are from foreign countries and other states, but guests can also locate some locally created sculpture. A blanket chest also features a rooster painted by the homeowner.

The home of Lillian and Albert Minck, at 44 Great Hill Road, dated from the mid-19th Century and sits on more than three acres. The rooms are enhanced by maple floors, high ceilings, and good windows. Paintings by Mrs Minck enliven the walls, a floor-to-ceiling fireplace punctuates the spacious living room, and a central hall leads to a country kitchen graced by a considerable table made by Mr Minck’s father. A formal dining room in blue has seen many family gathering through the 40-plus years the Minks have lived here.

Lilleba Peterson and Dave Luessenhop consider their home at 8 Valley View Road a Scandinavian retreat. The house is filled with items from Norway and Scandinavia, from the traditional costume that usually hangs from a front closet, a living room full of furniture that was shipped to Newtown from the home of Ms Peterson’s mother, cabinets and shelves filled with cobalt blue dinnerware, pots and pans from Norway, and even to the blue that colors the kitchen walls — a very popular color in Scandinavia, according to Ms Peterson.

The couple designed and built the home 45 years ago. She did the blueprints with her uncle, Al Christinsen, a former contractor. The three-bedroom ranch has served the couple well, even if it isn’t huge by today’s standards. “It’s not big, but we didn’t have big homes 45 years ago,” Mr Luessenhop said. “It’s just the right size, though. We raised two children here.”

The property was previously used as a farm, which meant the gardens were also started from scratch.

“There were no trees, nothing on it,” said Mr Luessenhop. “But we had a lot of good soil.”

Evidence of that soil can be seen from the moment guests walk through the home’s solarium. There are flowers and specimen trees including magnolias, Japanese dwarf cypress, Scotch pine, azaleas, rhododendron, hydrangea, and snowball bushes.

Next week: three more homes! The Budd House, The Ebenezer Beer Jr Homestead and a “classic 1970s construction” will be featured.

The Gardens

Three gardens are included in the ticket price this year, and all are within walking distance of each other. The gardens are at the homes of Brid Craddock and Harvey Pessin, at 59 Main Street; Shane and George Millers, 50 Main Street; and Renee and Kevin McManus, 35 Main Street.

Brid and Harvey live in an 18th Century home, but their gardens are much younger. The first bed, the square garden near the patio, was begun in 2001. The most recent addition is a bed next to their garage, which looks like a cottage garden and was started last year.

Plants have been selected to create a garden in continuous bloom, starting with witch hazel that puts on a show in February and ending with hellebores in December. Brid and Harvey grow most of their plants from seed. Harvey works at home these days, cultivating and propagating for the couple’s business, Craddock’s Heirloom Gardens, LLC, while Brid works full-time as a garden designer (and also finds time to teach at New York Botanical Garden).

Craddock’s Heirloom Gardens is a small business (“We’re a classic Mom and Pop business, even though Mom isn’t here during the day,” Harvey laughed) that specializes in plants that won’t be found in every other nursery. Harvey and Brid carefully consider which plants to offer, and have moved this year to an inventory of perennials and flowering shrubs.

The two greenhouses behind the home are filled with and surrounded by young plants. Ticket holders will see everything from small bamboo trees and ginkgo trees (the latter of which were started from clippings Harvey received from across-the-street neighbor Sherry Bermingham) to plenty of plants from Proven Winner, including globe llowers (Trollius pumilus), Chinese silver grass (Miscanthus sinensis), bee balm (Monarda didmay) and plenty of others.

The gardens are cared for as carefully as the couple’s business, and they consider their backyard an extension of their home. They encourage their daughter, in fact, to invite her friends over as often as possible and give her the space and freedom to use the yard to entertain. A fire pit is regularly used, and two small ponds — including a brand new one Harvey fashioned from an old horse trough recently found at a tag sale — provide more for the eye to absorb.

The gardens at 50 Main Street have also been a work in progress for George Miller, who clears out a new section of junglelike growth each spring and begins putting in new plants shortly thereafter.

“I just go by what I feel,” Mr Miller said, eagerly pointing at one of the 14 elephant’s ears that are just starting to pop through the dirt. His garden offers something in bloom all summer and early fall: there are hibiscus, grasses, roses, angel’s trumpet, weeping willow, and plenty of other flowers.

“I can’t pass up flowers when I see them,” he said.

Renee and Kevin McManus have created a terraced garden to the south of their house. The couple purchased their home in 1997 and started their gardens two years later, Mrs McManus estimates.

“It was an absolute mess back there,” she said last week. The couple first created a raised terrace, and massive granite stones serve a steps between the upper and lower lawn. The lower lawn is also surrounded by a carefully tended garden that reaches about five feet from the outer edge of the property and runs the length of the back yard.

Among the shrubs and trees to be found are rhododendron, pink dogwood, and grasses. Flowers include lamia, iris, lobelia, coleus, lavender, phlox, bee balm, yarrow and black-eyed Susans.

Special Features

Deb Osborne and members of The Garden Club of Newtown are planning fresh floral arrangements to complement each home.

Also as part of the tour, an art show will be set up in the barn of Shane and George Miller at 50 Main Street. The Millers have agreed to host work by the local painters Pat Barkman, Betty Christensen, Dick McEvoy, and Ruth Newquist, and photographs by Robert Berthier, Frank Gardner, and Angela Hare.