Saving Mrs. Farrand's Plants: Asticou

 Note:  Because I have included an unusually large number of photographs in this post, I have kept the picture size smaller than usual.  Please click on images for larger detailed full size views.
  

 

 Beatrix Farrand in the 1940's, from The Reef Point Bulletins

I made my annual pilgrimage to the Asticou Azalea Garden on Mt. Desert Island a few days ago.  I was a little late this year---an early summer and almost endless sunshine ensured that the usual Memorial Day peak of this garden had actually come a week before.  Do not misunderstand.  It was still ravishing, as the photographs will show.  The story of how this lovely spot came into being, as a rescue effort,  is an interesting one. 

The great garden designer Beatrix Farrand had a lifelong love affair with Maine, having summered in Bar Harbor since early childhood.  Her feeling for the rugged landscape inspired much of her best work in a series of subtle gardens that blended into their rugged settings.  Her own Reef Point estate, inherited from her mother, was for many years her laboratory, where she experimented with design ideas and plantings both native and exotic.

Ocean front view of Reef Point (Reef Point Bulletins)

It was her hope to turn Reef Point, its extensive library, and collection of gardens into a foundation for the study of plants and landscape architecture, and to that end a board was formed, renovations were made to house and grounds for their future use, staff was hired, and plans were made for a distinguished future.  In addition to the plants and gardens and extraordinary library, the collections included the papers and plans of the English designer Gertrude Jekyll, which Mrs. Farrand had purchased at great personal expense when they were threatened with certain dispersal.

 A corner of the Library at Reef Point, as refitted for public use (Reef Point Bulletins)

Over one decade in the 1940's and 1950's, the world, and Bar Harbor, as Mrs. Farrand had known it, changed irrevocably.  A World War followed the Great Depression.  Two years after the end of the war, a forest fire devastated much of the town, destroying many of the estates of her friends and clients, and when the town re-built, it was not as a fashionable resort, but as a tourist destination.  Motels sprang up on the ruins of the estates, and masses replaced classes on the Main Street.  Not liking what she saw, worried about the future endowment ( the only niece of Edith Wharton, Mrs. Farrand was  not wealthy by the standards of the world she inhabited), and feeling that the new, less rarefied Bar Harbor, geographically remote, was not the appropriate location for the endeavor, she shut down the foundation in 1956.

The Blue Reception Room at Reef Point, with some of Mrs. Farrand's large collection of 18th century landscape prints on the walls. (Reef Point Bulletins)

She donated the library, the vast collection of landscape prints of three centuries, and the Jekyll archives to the documents collection at the University of California at Berkeley, where her husband, historian Max Farrand had taught.  She had the main house at Reef Point demolished. She herself arranged to retire to the family farm of her horticulturalist, Amy Garland, building an apartment between the Garland's house and barn, where she would live with her personal maid, Clementine Walter.  To create this new home, Farrand used salvaged architectural elements from Reef Point, and created an intimate garden, with many of her beloved roses, perennials and heaths and heathers, also brought from Reef Point.  Here Farrand died in 1959.

View of main garden axis from house at Reef Point, looking across heather plantings to Frenchman's Bay.  Urns in foreground are by Soderholtz (more about Soderholtz here)

 Another garden path at Reef Point.  The undulating edges of the flower borders, mimicking the edge of the forest, and the way the cultivated seemlessly blends to the natural, is deceptively simple, and brilliant. (Reef Point Bulletins)

Meanwhile, Reef Point was to be sold, and remaining there was the bulk of Mrs. Farrand's plant collection--(as late as the 1970's, I remember being struck by the perfect  effect of a Laburnum,  Golden Chain tree, over the fence, framing a view on shore path in front of the former Reef Point), including her remarkable collection of Azaleas and Rhododendrons.  Enter, to the rescue, the remarkable Charles Kenneth Savage.

The pool at the Asticou Azalea Garden

Charles Savage's family had long lived in nearby Northeast Harbor, where they owned the Asticou Inn, a big old shingled summer hotel.   Young Savage, noted for artistic talent at an early age, was at boarding school in Boston when his father died, and at the age of 17 he returned home to help his mother run the inn.  Savage, who loved the island, and its unique landscape, became friends with many of the leading talents of the day on Mt. Desert, notably Farrand, and landscape architect Joseph Curtis, who summered on the hillside just beyond Asticou Inn.  From both, Savage absorbed important lessons in the principles of landscape design, and the importance of using native plants and materials.   When Curtis died, leaving his property, with its carefully designed trails (a future post) as a public trust, Savage was its first trustee, and for many years the presiding genius of the place.  He also had a seat on the board of The Reef Point Foundation, and when Farrand decided to dismantle her life's work, Savage was given a year to rescue what plants he could.

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Casting about for a site, Savage seized upon the alder swamp across the street from his family's hotel, and armed with his ambitious plan, approached neighbor John D. Rockefeller Jr. whose own garden had been designed 25 years previously by Farrand, and Rockefeller agreed to finance the project.

Paths at Asticou

Savage, using the lessons he had learned so well from Farrand & Curtis, dredged the swamp to form a pool by the road, with the garden in the distance.  He conceived it as a Japanese stroll garden, harmonious with the rocky spruce clad landscape surrounding it.  A stream, with a gentle waterfall was formed, crossed by two bridges.  Savage, a talented sculptor in wood, had a particular feeling for stone, and selected many pieces of worn granite for integration into his design.  In this framework were planted azaleas, rhodendendrons and other shrubs from Reef Point.  A Japanese sand garden, inspired by one in Kyoto, was a surprise as one traveled the carefully raked gravel paths.

Two views of the sand garden at Asticou

A detail of stonework at waterfall at the South Bridge at Asticou, featuring Rhodendendron Kiusasianum

After Savage's death, stewardship of the garden passed to the Mt. Desert Land & Garden Preserve, funded by the Rockefeller family to maintain this garden, another Savage garden at Asticou (future post), and the spectacular Farrand garden designed for Abby Aldrich Rockefeller on their estate in neighboring Seal Harbor. Several additions have been made to the garden in recent years, notably a new entrance by Patrick Chasse from a parking lot at the rear of the property.

  Cornus Canadensis, Bunch berry, a favorite native ground cover of Farrand (and of the Dilettante)

Paths of finely crushed native pink granite are raked in patterns each morning, as they have been since Charles Savage's day.

An interesting fence screens the work area from the gardens

 

Do not adjust your sets.  The picture is not upside down.  Sky reflected in pond at Asticou

Concrete Beauty: E.E. Soderholtz

Pay attention, class.  With the advent of summer, I will be posting about several favorite gardens here in  eastern Maine, and this is a name you will need to remember:  Eric Ellis Soderholtz.  He was a pioneer in American garden pottery at the turn of the last century, and as well as in the artistic use of that most humble of mediums, concrete.  His extraordinary garden pots, perfect in the Maine landscape, were among the fascinations of many area gardens in my youth. 

Three examples of Soderholtz at his best, two pots based on ancient forms in re-inforced concrete, and a birdbath (Soderholtz photograph)

Architectural Photographer
Born in Sweden, based in Boston, Soderholtz's first career was as a photographer, specializing in Architecture.  In the late 19th century, on the wave of interest in America's past, he published several groundbreaking books of photographs of early American houses.  His work also appeared in most of the major magazines of the day, from Architectural Record to House Beautiful.  In a review of one of his books, Architectural Review's critic opined that Soderholtz had no peer among architectural photographers.

E.E. Soderholtz at age 91 in 1959, with one of his ancient inspired jars

A similar jar by Soderholtz, originally in the garden at Beatrix Farrand's 'Reef Point' estate in Bar Harbor, now at Thuya Garden in Northeast Harbor.

He first discovered Maine on a fishing trip, winding up in the hamlet of West Gouldsboro, near the spectacular scenery of the Schoodic Peninsula, now part of Acadia National Park.  He fell in love with the area, and eventually built a fascinating stone Arts & Crafts bungalow, Boreas Lodge, on a rocky ledge there.  

A deceptively simple turned pot, with Soderholtz's scarab trademark impressed on the side (Soderholtz)

While in Europe photographing ancient works in Spain and the Mediterranean ---a project that required up to three assistants to carry the heavy glass plate negatives used in that time.  He was especially drawn to the simple forms of  ancient utilitarian pots.

The Soderholtz studio in West Gouldsboro, Maine

Garden Potter
Shortly after returning to America, he was commissioned to photograph a garden in New Jersey.  He was stuck by the beauty of a pair of turned concrete pots he saw there.  He measured and copied them for his own doorstep at West Gouldsboro, where the thin rocky Maine soil made gardening on the ground difficult. Landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, visiting from Bar Harbor, was immediately taken with this first effort and asked Soderholtz to make copies for a job that she was working on.  A new career was born, and almost overnight Soderholtz's simple, beautifully textured designs were in such demand that he semi-retired from photography and opened a small factory studio to manufacture these beautiful objects.

Two of Soderholtz's earliest works, in his own garden in Gouldsboro.  He referred to these as 'Arabian' oil jars.

 3-part wooden form used to model the jars above.

He experimented with shapes, techniques, and finishes.  Pieces were manufactured using various techniques, including molding on a form, and pivoting against a template. The finish layers were applied by hand on a turning wheel. Powdered brick dust mixed in the concrete gave a particularly beautiful finish, and various other materials, from coal dust to mica chips were used for various colored and textured surfaces.  Stamps were used to impress designs on some of his pieces, My favorites being inspired by Persian and Greek forms.  Eventually the business grew to encompass architectural elements also---gateposts, columns, friezes and more custom work embellished several of the major Bar Harbor residences of the era, and can be found as far south as Dumbarton Oaks, Farrand's design for the Robert Blisses in Georgetown, D.C. 

Workmen with a copy of the Boboli urn at the studio.  This may have been finished with powdered brick dust tinting the concrete.

In addition to Soderholtz's custom work, he had retail operations on site in Gouldsboro, and at the Malvern Nurseries, adjoining the fashionable Malvern Hotel in Bar Harbor.

Soderholtz wares on sale at the Malvern Nurseries, Malvern Hotel in Background.

With the coming of the great depression, business declined, and the studio was closed.  35 years ago, one could still see the giant wooden forms that had shaped many of his pots, strewn about the grounds of his home in West Gouldsboro.   With a resurgence of interest in landscape design over the last couple of decades, Soderholtz's pots, identified by their distinctive scarab chop mark stamped in the wet concrete, are once again much in demand, and collectors include Martha Stewart, who has several at her Skylands estate in Seal Harbor.   Prices are commensurate with rarity and demand.

 Architectural Elements by Manufactured by Soderholtz

Soderholtz balustrades and urns fronting the driveway at 'Greenway Court' designed by Andrews, Jacques & Rantoul for F. Burton Harrison at Bar Harbor.  In the distance across Frenchman's Bay can be seen Gouldsboro, where Soderholtz lived.  Incidentally, 'Greenway Court' was later owned by the Charles Pikes of Chicago, who also owned a spectacular David Adler villa in Lake Forest.

A pair of obelisks manufactured by Soderholtz on the ocean terrace at 'Greenway Court'.  Soderholtz took both pictures, which appeared in an article in Country Life in America in 1911.

The 1903 Bar Harbor villa of Standard Oil heiress Anne Archbold, designed by Miss Archbold in concert with sculptress Janet Scudder & local architect Fred Savage.  The circular lily pool with dolphin fountain, modeled after a 18th century French original, and all the decorative concrete work were executed by Soderholtz.

Fountain in the garden of 'Hauterive', the Miles B. Carpenter estate at Bar Harbor, photographed by Soderholtz for Country Life in America.  The curved concrete bench embracing the 17th century Italian fountain was fabricated by Soderholtz to the designs of landscape architect I. Howland Jones.  (And just to tantalize you, the house itself, for a future post, also featured a lacquered dining room decorated by Baron de Meyer, and an 18th century French drawing room supplied by Lord Duveen.)

In addition to my own clip files and memory on this subject, I have also relied on information from the following sources:

1. Soderholtz, E.E.  "Indestructible Home-Made Garden Furniture", Garden Magazine, June 1908, p. 276.   This fascinating article tells in Soderholtz's own words how he created his pots, . It can be viewed on Google Books by clicking here   
2. Crane, Jonah.  "Garden Potter",  Down East Magazine, _____, 1959, p. 26
3. Chasse, Patrick.  "Eric Ellis Soderholtz, Maine's Craftsman in the Garden"  essay from " A Place to Take Root:  The History of Garden Pots & Flower Containers in North America", an exhibit presented at the Blum Gallery of the College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, 2004.  Click here for the complete text and photographs of this fascinating exhibit.

Amphora, made & photographed by Soderholtz