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WNY GREEN THUMBS
MARY GURTLER HER GARDEN IS WHO SHE IS
By Donna Evans
Realtors call it “curbside appeal.” Experienced gardeners recognize it as a work of art. Even laymen know at first glance that the flowers, lawn, and container gardens in the front yard of Mary Gurtler’s house are the hard work of someone with knowledge, dedication, and a lot of talent. But the front is only the beginning—the backyard, which flows in various terraced levels down to Freeman Pond, is the piece de resistance.
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Gurtler is very modest about her talents. She began gardening only ten years ago at the urging of her husband, John.
“When our kids were little, John asked me if I had ever worked in a garden,” she says. “I hadn’t, but for our next anniversary I made a very small garden as a gift to him. So it began as a gift to him and became a gift to me.”
At first Gurtler learned from the people around her, neighbors like Jim Upson, who has his own beautiful yard, and the nursery people she visited. Then she began to take courses in gardening at Erie Community College, where she met a woman who was an alumnus of Cornell. Next thing she knew she found herself in a four-week course at Cornell, and then taking the master gardener course at the Cornell Cooperative Extension.
To this day she attends seminars, only now it’s at the bidding of her boss, Harry Lockwood at Lockwood Nursery, who likes all of his staff to keep up-to-date.
“My work at Lockwood’s has been a truly wonderful experience. There I am learning with the best in the field. Harry Lockwood has been a great mentor to me, allowing me the time and opportunity to really explore the world of plants in a way that keeps the work fresh and creative.”
But to be a gardener like Gurtler, you have to have something more than book learning.
“I don’t care how much knowledge you have. There’s an eye,” she says. “And a willingness to let things unfold. It takes a lot of patience. You have to like to see the garden’s beauty at the end of the day.”
And the end of the day may be two or three or more years down the road. Her motto, Gurtler says, is: “The garden has its own rhythm—we’re just the caretakers.”
Her main philosophy is that the garden should be an extension of the house—a series of additional rooms, you could say. And she has succeeded nicely on her own lot.
“Your garden should reflect your house and your lifestyle—it should be how you live and who you are. We are very casual, for example,” she says, referring to her own family.
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Gurtler mixes annuals and perennials
and relies on containers
for versatility.
Photo courtesy of Mary Gurtler.
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Gurtler says they were also very lucky. The yard at the house they bought is only a quarter of an acre, but it has variety: sunny places, shade, a place for a rock garden, and the pond.
“When we bought the house, we didn’t realize what we had. The yard was completely overgrown. As we cleared it, we found this beautiful stone ... We didn’t even know the back terrace (a large slate terrace which is great for entertaining) was there,” she says.
Using a mixture of perennials and annuals, Gurtler is working toward giving her garden more structure to allow for even better flow. She uses container gardens to keep that feeling of flow as you move from the inside to the outside. Containers, she says, are the one type of garden that give instant gratification. The rest is a wait-and-see venture.
Gurtler says she made a lot of mistakes in the early days, so now she tries to help others avoid similar errors.
“Last summer I taught two small groups of about eight people each. My goal was to help them get things right the first time. We started out by assessing their sites—looked at how much sun and shade they have, what the soil content was—going from house to house,” she says. “I love to help people who enjoy learning.”
One of her students commented that Gurtler was lucky her garden was finished.
“I thought, ‘how depressing that would be!’ It’s never done; there are always things you want to change and improve.”
Although no one in her family (there are three children, Hillary, Kelsey and Jake) has inherited her love for gardening, they all enjoy the garden and have helped in their own ways.
“One day I came home from work and the kids and John all had hard hats on—they were in the middle of taking down this old shed we had at the edge of the yard near the pond so we could build a little garden house like one in a picture that had been taped to my cupboard for years.
“We copied the picture and added a few things, and we have this delightful small cottage with steps down to our pier and the pond. We’ve all spent a lot of time out there,” Gurtler says.
Now that her children are older, Gurtler has more time to read her gardening magazines and—when she’s not working at Lockwood’s—spend time in her own yard.
From ten years ago when she first discovered this love right up to today, there is nothing she enjoys more than being out in her garden from early in the morning until it’s too dark to see anymore. When she comes in tired and dirty, it’s been a good day.
“Ultimately, we can help things along, but a garden really has its own life,” she says.
Donna Evans is a freelance writer and public relations specialist.
WNY GREEN THUMBS
ARLAN PETERS AMID CITY LIFE, QUIET BEAUTY
By Gwen Ito
“A good garden will never be finished. A good gardener will never want it to be.”
“Think of your garden as a series of rooms with something new to discover around every corner.”
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-Arlan Peters and Dom DeFillippo
Arlan Peters is quick to say that he knows no more about gardening than the average gardener. He is not, in his view, a “master gardener.” Yet every detail in the stunning home he shares with Dom DeFillippo—from the specially designed greenhouse off their kitchen to the beautifully maintained plants in the back yard—belies this humble self-assessment. In fact, he is much more than the average gardener. A lifelong admirer of nature’s gifts, Peters is sensitive to all the nuances— space, shape, color, even a manmade structure—that contribute to a successful garden, especially one nestled in an urban setting.
“Gardening is as much about design as it is knowing about plants,” he says. Instead of straight lines, he loves irregular ones, along with curved corners and pathways. Peters stresses that the structures found in a garden—whether statues, benches, or small decorative objects—are as essential to the ambiance as the flowers themselves. And because a garden presents an opportunity for self-expression, he favors homemade touches over professional landscaping. “I think any garden has to reflect the personality of the person that it belongs to. It can’t really be your garden if you haven’t had a big part in deciding what to have there.” Together, he and DeFillippo—who, according to Peters, is equally if not more knowledgeable about gardening than he is—have created a shaded backyard oasis that reflects their personal tastes.
Growing up in rural Iowa, where he was surrounded by lush greenery, sweet-smelling wildflowers, and wide open spaces, Arlan Peters cultivated a reverence for nature at an early age. He can recall helping out on the family farm when he was just four or five. As a college student, he spent summers working as a concessionaire at Yellowstone Park; in between helping tourists load film into their cameras, he would walk around and admire majestic examples of his favorite plants. Now in his late sixties, the nature enthusiast finds it ironic that he ended up a city dweller.
In 1963, when it was still a fledgling government program, Peters joined the Peace Corps and taught English as a Foreign Language in Colombia. Two years later he came to Buffalo to do graduate work in English at the University at Buffalo, eventually becoming a high school teacher for the public school system. Since 1971, he and DeFillippo have lived on the West Side, where they volunteer a great deal of their time and talent as neighborhood activists. The two friends are among the main organizers of the annual Garden Walk, an event designed to promote a positive image of city living. They are also part of a volunteer group that helped beautify the corner of North and Elmwood by turning a patch of asphalt into a small community garden.
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While gardening can yield immediate, tangible results, it is still a long-term commitment, demanding as much patience and flexibility as it does sensitivity to details. According to Peters, the number one mistake of new gardeners is the tendency to try to do too much too fast. “You should start on a relatively small scale,” he counsels. “You have to plant roots so that things have a chance to develop—in your garden and in yourself.” Indeed, gardening allows you to observe and learn from plants over a period of time, and in so doing, to become better attuned to your own environment. His general advice for first-time gardeners? Conceive an overall plan for what you want, and then work gradually to achieve it—but expect a great deal of trial and error along the way.
Peters explains that he’s made many mistakes, and is constantly changing and adding things to his own garden. If he discovers that a plant isn’t doing well, he won’t hesitate to move it to another spot. Talking to his plants is part of the nurturing process, and although they don’t talk back to him, Arlan says with a smile: “They do let you know when they’re not happy.”
The garden that Arlan Peters has created with Dom DeFillippo is for him a sanctuary, offering an intimate connection with his surroundings and a reassuring reminder of everything he finds precious in life. “The ultimate goal is to make a place of peace for yourself,” Peters asserts. In a city where the hectic pace of contemporary living can cause us to hurry past the details of nature all too often, his seems a goal worth embracing.
Gwen Ito is a freelance writer living in Buffalo.
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