With his original digital Canon Rebel, landscape designer Duncan Brine makes images that share the design principles of his garden, “how it works.”

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Duncan’s wife, Julia Brine, his partner in their landscape design firm, Horticultural Design, Inc., depicts botanical and natural subjects in watercolor and pencil.

© Julia Brine

Learn more at gardenlarge.com.

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 New England Wild Flower Society to visit the Brine Garden

The Brine Design:
Landscape and Garden Principles in Practice

Join an on-site seminar at landscape designer Duncan Brine’s own six-acre garden. The Brine Garden – now in its 21st year – resembles a public garden, with multiple areas, each with its own character.

© gardenlarge

America’s first native plant group, The New England Wild Flower Society of Framingham, Massachusetts is to visit the Brine Garden this fall.

Native plants from Horticultural Design’s nursery help the Brine Garden blend with adjacent naturalistic areas and preserved lands. Anne Raver of The New York Times recently described the garden as a “dream-like landscape.” Author Ruah Donnelly describes The Brine Garden as “a naturalistic display garden of remarkable artistry and diversity.” Prolific garden book author, Tovah Martin, writes that at the Brine Garden, “elements of concealment and surprise are written into the landscape.” This roaming seminar will include a discussion of Duncan Brine’s landscape design process, and respond to your observations and questions.

Leader: Duncan Brine is the Principal of Horticultural Design, Inc., Pawling, NY, as well as an instructor for the New York Botanical Garden.

Fall 2011

Saturday, October 1, from 1pm to 4p

Registration

Anne’s Favorites:

If you’re starting a new garden or contemplating a redesign, consider a naturalistic approach, which has renewed relevance in today’s environment.

© 2011 Rob Cardillo

TWENTY YEARS AGO, I left New York City with my future wife to make a garden and a new life in the country, north of the city. There I found inspiration in moving away from the status quo of traditional gardens and toward a career creating naturalistic gardens….

Read the full article

For more information please check out our Brine Garden page

Legendary American landscape design figures—Alexander Jackson Downing, Frederick Law Olmsted, Beatrix Farrand, and Fletcher Steele—all worked in the Hudson Valley.

Gardens of the Hudson Valley celebrates the historic and artistic landscape. Photographers Steve Gross and Susan Daly specialize in architecture, interiors, gardens, travel and lifestyle. Steve and Sue have selected twenty-five gardens between Yonkers and Hudson, including the fabled estate gardens – Kykuit, Boscobel, and Olana (open to the public) and private gardens that combine sweeping views and lush plantings.

Garden writers Susan Lowry and Nancy Berner are the authors of Garden Guide: New York City, revised edition, 2010, Norton. In Gardens of the Hudson Valley they describe each of the gardens, focusing on the history of the site and the strategies for design and plant materials.

Forward by Gregory Long, president of The New York Botanical Garden
Monacelli Press
Publication date: October 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58093-277-6 (1-58093-277-0)

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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.

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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.”

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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.