October 22, 11am-5pm and October 23, 1pm-4pm, at the Frances Ryan Thomas Memorial Center of Christ Church on Quaker Hill in Pawling, NY.

Join the Brines and other FrOGS to celebrate the diverse beauty of our local, majestic wetland. Enjoy work by local artists and artisans, educational displays, food, and activities.

© Constance Duhamel

FrOGS (Friends of the Great Swamp) is an active voice for the protection of the Great Swamp, one of the largest freshwater wetlands in New York State.

The Garden Conservancy, which makes America’s finest private gardens available to the public, presents the Brine Garden and the Scherer Garden in Pawling, NY, this Saturday, October 2, from 2-6 pm, rain or shine ($5 admission per garden).

In fall, rather than focusing on flowers, these gardens feature the ambiance created by vistas, their plants’ form, texture, and color. Kathy and Stan Scherer’s  botanically rich garden includes woodland paths, a mix of woody and herbaceous plantings, and a memorable Quaker Hill view.

© gardenlarge.com

The New York Times, Horticulture Magazine, and other publications have featured Duncan Brine’s work. In the New York Times, Anne Raver describes the Brine Garden as “a dreamlike landscape.” She writes: “…the plants have been given unexpected roles, in unusual places, and the delight comes in seeing what they will do on this ever-changing stage.”

Horticulture’s Carleen Madigan explores Brine’s landscape design method, saying, “…the Brine garden is the embodiment of Duncan’s philosophy of gardening large. This concept doesn’t necessarily relate to size; it’s the idea that an entire property, be it two acres or twenty, should be seen and treated as one garden…”

Marilyn Bethany, formerly of New York magazine, wrote about the Brine Garden in www.ruralintelligence.com. “All good gardens are instructive. This one? It will blow your mind.”

© gardenlarge.com

Diverse trees, shrubs, and grasses structure the naturalistic six acre Brine Garden, including an allée of the native, faux evergreen, Taxodium; a group of the uncommon understory maple, Acer triflorum; a grove of the native exfoliating birch, Betula nigra; a clutch of dense tree canopies from Persia, Parrotia; a band of distinctive fast growing, native swamp oak, Quercus bicolor, which was just introduced at the site of the former World Trade center; and the towering grass, Miscanthus giganteus, just coming into “flower” which to many resembles bamboo. Brine Garden visitors receive a property map and a list with botanical and common names distinguishing between U.S. native and locally indigenous plants.

Brine Garden 20th anniversary

Saturday’s Open Day is part of the Brine Garden 20th anniversary, which honors Doug Tallamy’s groundbreaking book, Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants (2009 Timber Press and available at Pawling’s Book Cove). Tallamy, an entomologist, writes of a future where the canopies of indigenous backyard trees link to provide meaningful habitat, especially for birds and pollinating insects.

The 20th year celebration began with a festive opening for an exhibit of Brine Garden images at Pawling’s Gallery on the Green and continues with the concurrent publication of a magazine article and a new book featuring the garden.

Duncan Brine’s article, “Inviting Nature into Your Garden,” urges those, “starting a new garden or contemplating a redesign, to consider a naturalistic approach, which has renewed relevance in today’s environment.” His feature story, accompanied by many images, is in the current issue of The American Gardener, published by the American Horticultural Society. (To read excerpts from the article, join the Brine Garden page on Facebook.)

Gardens of the Hudson Valley (2010 Monacelli Press), with a foreword by the New York Botanical Garden president, Gregory Long, has lavish, revealing photographs of the Brine Garden by Sue Daley and Steve Gross and interpretative text by Nancy Berner and Susan Lowry.

FrOGS Event

Duncan, with his wife and partner Julia Brine, will staff one of many tables at the free (donations accepted) upcoming FrOGS Art Show and Celebration of the Great Swamp, October 23 and 24, on Pawling’s Quaker Hill, in the exhibit hall behind Christ Church. FrOGS is dedicated to the protection and preservation of the Great Swamp of Dutchess and Putnam Counties through science and education. This lively annual event allows the whole family to learn, from a variety of sources, about what’s going on with the nature in our midst, and to discover the Brines’ passion and vision for a private garden’s potential. They are principals of Horticultural Design, Inc., a landscape design and installation firm, specializing in native plants and naturalistic gardens since 1984.

Visit www.gardenlarge.com, for directions to the Brine and Scherer gardens, information about the FrOGS event, and more about Horticultural Design, Inc, Duncan Brine, and the Brine Garden.

October 23, 11am-5pm and October 24, 1pm-4pm, at the Frances Ryan Thomas Memorial Center of Christ Church on Quaker Hill in Pawling, NY.

Join the Brines and other FrOGS to celebrate the diverse beauty of our local, majestic wetland. Enjoy work by local artists and artisans, educational displays, food, and activities.

© Nancy Clark

FrOGS (Friends of the Great Swamp) is an active voice for the protection of the Great Swamp, one of the largest freshwater wetlands in New York State.

Duncan Brine
Principal Landscape Designer
Horticultural Design, Inc.
speaks on
Living in Nature
at the Berkshire Botanical Garden

 Saturday, January 30

For more on this talk go to gardenlarge.com.

The New York Botanical Garden
presents a seminar
Site Character: An Approach to Creative Design
with
Duncan Brine

Wednesday, February 17, 10am – 12pm

For more on this seminar go to gardenlarge.com.

Connecticut Horticultural Society
presents
Duncan Brine
Structuring Nature: Whole Property Design

Thursday, February 18, 7:30 pm

For more on this talk go to gardenlarge.com.

The Monacelli
Press

Upcoming book from the Monacelli Press,
a division of Random House,

Gardens of the Hudson Valley

by Steve Gross and Sue Daley
features the Brine Garden.

Publication date fall 2010

New book from Timber Press
by Jennifer Benner and Stephanie Cohen
features the Brine Garden.

Publication date 2010

Storey Publishing’s
Designer Plant Combinations (Published 2008)
by Scott Calhoun
features ten pages of images and plant combinations
from the Brine Garden.

Scott is a recipient of the highest awards from
the American Horticultural Society and
the Garden Writers Association of America.

His blog: Scott Calhoun’s Desert

Inspired Calligraphy, The Brine Garden © Scott Calhoun 

‘The example titled Inspired Calligraphy (Brine Garden, pg 202) features
‘Nana’ dwarf purple willow, ‘Autumn Spire’ maple and “Tardiva’ hydrangea.
Scott poetically describes the effect of the maple’s foliage: “Creeping into the vignette,
the ‘Autumn Spire’ provides a dash of red, like a confident brushstroke
in black and red Japanese calligraphy.” ‘

– Billy Goodnick, Fine Gardening Blog

Win a copy of Designer Plant Combinations from Fine Gardening.

Read “Eden Reconsidered“

An Appreciation of the Brine Garden

by Marilyn Bethany

Join Duncan. He’s @gardenlarge
on Twitter.

gardenlarge.com

Naturalistic Landscape Design
Horticultural Design, Inc., Duncan Brine and the Brine Garden
hortdesign@gardenlarge.com  (845) 855-9023

Schedule a garden consultation for this fall.

Get an eyeful of his perspective here.

http://www.townofdover.us/HudsoniaPresentation.pdf

FrOGS News Alerts

Eighteen Acres of Promise (2008)

by Judy Kelley-Moberg

FrOGS has been able to acquire an 18-acre patch of uplands and floodplain meadow bordering Quaker Brook at the corner of Haviland Hollow Road and East Branch Road in the Town of Patterson.

Quaker Brook, sometimes called Haviland Hollow Brook, runs through the 18-acre parcel before turning south to join the East Branch of the Croton River in the Great Swamp.

Quaker Brook is not only a major artery that feeds the “heart” of the Great Swamp but it’s also an ecologically unique and important waterway. Fishermen know this brook as a pristine trout stream thought to be one of the rare places where native trout populations can still survive.