![]() ![]() In the morning, he steps out into the garden with the couple’s two English bulldogs, Dolly and Ted, takes a walk with his coffee and assesses the garden areas. His partner, Michael Alderfer, joined him 28 years ago and together they have worked to bring shape and character to the place, gravitating to their preferred tasks and horticultural interests.Īpart from the canceled events and garden tours, Culp’s daily routine has been fairly normal during the pandemic. He came to the site when it was a bit of a barren wreck in 1990. “The garden made me.”ĭavid Culp has spent 30 years transforming his two-acre property, Brandywine Cottage, into a garden of delight. But it would all mean nothing without his garden. In late winter, he organizes a weekend festival celebrating the snowdrops that draw snowdrop fanciers from near and far, including England and continental Europe. Being stuck in a horticultural paradise of your own making is like locking Picasso in a studio and telling him he has to paint.Ĭulp loves the camaraderie of the garden world: the symposiums, the dinner parties with plant-nerd friends, the plant sales in public gardens. When you devote years to creating a garden at this level, it becomes the center of your universe. The enforced isolation has brought home what he knew all along. ![]() “It was the absolutely worst time to launch a book,” he says.īut Culp is not crestfallen. Some friends drove by to look at the roadside tulips. Then the coronavirus arrived and the shutdown followed. This year, the parties, book signings and garden tours promised to be a marker, perhaps the marker, of a life’s work. At Brandywine Cottage, spring is a highlight of the garden’s year, a time when as many as two busloads of visitors a week arrive to take in extravagant displays of tulips and savor walks through the burgeoning woodland, the decorative vegetable garden, the herbaceous borders and more than a dozen other major features. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |