Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 27, 1995 TAG: 9508250128
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A gardening story at the peak of summer's heat - when the tomatoes are rotting, and the bugs have chomped things dry, and if you see one more stubborn stalk of lambs-quarters you will simply fall backward, hand on forehead, in a fit of the vapors?
``You're a masochist,'' painter Pat West says.
And yet here it is: The perennial pains and prunings of three area painters who sculpt their gardens with the same aesthetic eye they reserve for the canvas.
Even in August.
Even in the 95-degree heat.
Even though they know the garden is the ultimate work-in-progress.
As West puts it, ``As soon as you turn your back it goes to forest again. ... Gardening is just your will - for as long as you can hold it.''
So, don't despair in these dog days of weed-whacking. From the mulch pile of these artists' masterpieces come some information and inspiration (along with perspiration) ... just when you need it most.
\ When Nancy Dahlstrom moved into her cinderblock Botetourt County house 20 years ago, she had more than 100 houseplants and only a 12-by-12-foot plot of yard to putter in.
Now she has eight acres of land to go with the house - an entire acre of which she maintains as a garden.
Make that plural: Dahlstrom has gardens - a vegetable garden, an herb garden, multiple flower beds, and rock ledges sculpted into garden sanctuaries with intertwined spots of sculpture throughout it all.
Dahlstrom, a Hollins College art professor, can't seem to stop.
``I'm at the point where I'm getting overwhelmed,'' she says in one breath.
And 15 minutes later: ``Wouldn't that whole hill in sunflowers be wonderful?''
Dahlstrom allows her two favorite art forms to play off each other. ``If I'm stuck on a piece or frustrated and need to get out of the studio, I do the garden instead,'' she says, relying on fellow Hollins professor Jeanne Larsen's theory for breaking writer's block:
``When you're stuck in your work, do the mundane thing, and that's when the answer comes.''
Dahlstrom experiments with color and texture in her garden as much as in her studio. Last summer, she focused exclusively on etching the volunteer sunflowers and corn in her garden.
``Creating a garden is a lot like making a painting,'' she says. ``I love looking at forms, playing with different colors and textures next to each other.''
Her tips for other gardeners:
Do as Dahlstrom says - not as she does - and start small.
Walk in your garden often, viewing it from different perspectives for ideas.
Psych yourself out for the chores. ``When I mow, I think of it as mulch collection instead of mowing, so it's more of a production thing than just maintenance.''
A weed-pulling tip she picked up from Findhorn, a spiritual/gardening community in Scotland: If you rip the weeds at full-throttle, they'll resist.
Instead, give them a gentle tug, wait three seconds, then pull. They'll come up easier, Dahlstrom swears.
Use what's available. Dahlstrom lived on her land for 18 years before she realized a rock ledge was hiding under the back brush. Now that rock ledge has become the back frame of her garden. It's encircled by a border of day lilies - plants given to her by a friend and fellow gardener who recently died.
Dahlstrom created six meandering beds of bushes, rocks and flowers beneath the rock ledge. How did she come to decide where one bed should end and another begin?
``I went to the top of the hill and called the dogs.'' The dogs took the path of least resistance, and a series of pathways was born.
\ Eric Fitzpatrick fell in love with more than just the art work of Northern Italy. During his five summer trips abroad, he became hooked on Tuscany's lush formal gardens - the sculpture, the topiaries, the sprawling ivy, the splashes of color. Nevermind that the painter had never gardened a day in his life. Fitzpatrick was driven to replicate that same peaceful Italian symmetry - in his own South Roanoke backyard.
``I took notes and sketches on my '88 trip, knowing I wanted to do something,'' he says. His father, retired judge Beverly Fitzpatrick, helped him construct the trellises and beds.
The trellises became ivy-covered arches, enclosing sculptures and benches that attract both the eye and the body. Five symmetrical beds of Korean boxwood and holly became the maze that encloses marigold and impatiens clusters.
But Fitzpatrick made sure that flowers weren't the main focus of his garden. ``Why have a garden that's only brilliant in the spring and summer?'' he says.
So the artist copied another Italian gardening trait. He bought soft hues of blue and coral tiles, smashed them up with a hammer and laid them on top of ground cloth within the boxwood borders, creating yet another pattern.
When the flowers die out, the colors remain - year-round.
And the best feature of all: The garden is low-maintenance. ``Every now and then I take a weekend to cut the hedges back,'' he says.
Fitzpatrick views his garden as a single giant sculpture. ``You start with a big shape and work your way down to the details. You don't know exactly where you're going. And when you get almost there, you fine-tune.
``But you can't visualize the whole thing from the beginning; it has to go its own way. Then you sit back and live with it for a while, and say, `That's not right,' and you keep working.''
The seven years it took to complete his garden makes it the longest art project he's ever done, he says. The garden was featured recently in the winter 1994-95 issue of Country Gardens magazine.
Now that it's complete, he enjoys sitting on his wisteria-encased patio and watching the dragonflies buzz among the fish-pond lilies and lion's head sculpture. ``It's like they send out scouts; you wonder how they find the water.
``The birds just flock here like it's a sanctuary.''
Which it is, in Fitzpatrick's eyes. Sitting on his patio chair, he says, ``If there's a lens through which I look at the day, this is it. Even if it's gray, the garden is always great-looking - always green, always lush.''
|n n| Looking at Pat West's little corner of Giles County, it's hard to decide which is her most impressive production.
There's the house she built - by herself - an eclectic blend of form, function and funk. From windows begged from the old Pembroke School, scrap lumber and stones from the nearby New River, the construction cost ``about as much as you'd spend on a fancy double-wide.''
There's the studio she built - by herself - with its impressive array of paintings and its attached orchid-filled greenhouse.
And there's the garden she built - by herself - a sprawl of exotic trees, bushes and rocks with the occasional artistic pile of rocks or arranged wood sculptures thrown in.
West has perfected the fine art of bartering for plants, trading for trees and generally making the most of what is readily available, both indoors and out.
``She had no idea what she was doing,'' says her boyfriend, Chris Munger, of the house. ``She just started piling stone upon stone, building columns.
``I'm not entirely convinced that it won't fall over one day.''
West has given up worrying about it.
Art, gardening, life - it's all a losing proposition, she seems to be saying. So why not just make the most out of the time and space we have?
``Gardening is the most incredibly difficult kind of sculpture there is,'' she says. ``For one thing, where are the edges? Where does it end? ... Unlike when you paint, when you garden all the forces are totally out of control.''
``ART FOR SALE,'' the sign says, greeting visitors to the dead-end road corner of her property. And just above the sign is where the art starts: a circle of standing stones, a line of sculpted wood wrapped in kiwi vine.
Even deer bones become art in West's yard, and they're functional, too, hanging under the rafters near the water garden. ``They're supposed to remind tall people to duck their heads.''
She has no holiness about trees, she says, and has been known to chain saw a would-be 80-feet-tall tree down to 3 feet, just to give it the right form. She puts red Japanese blood grass next to yellow day lilies - letting the colors dance before her eye - then rearranges them if the juxtaposition doesn't work ... from each and every angle in the garden.
``I like the manipulation of stuff,'' she says. She trims a dogwood back so it leans to the right - creating ``an interesting line'' in winter. She hauls giant boulders in from the river bank in her pickup truck.
She leaves no potential stone unturned, no potential plant unearthed.
A fossil-engraved slab of limestone found in Sinking Creek became a table top for her outdoor patio furniture. A large rock with a hole in the top became a bird's nest sculpture - with multi-hued stones laid inside as eggs.
``We are always making nice little corners to sit outside, but we rarely sit down. There's too much to do,'' she says.
Her favorite season is winter - when the leaves disappear from sight, creating a new perspective of lines and shapes. ``It's the best time for moving rocks and plants around and seeing what you've got,'' she says.
West's parting advice:
Changing the plant arrangement makes gardening more interesting. ``It's like cleaning the house. I can do it more easily if I rearrange the furniture while I'm doing it.''
Give up the masterpiece syndrome. ``Just do it and see what works. And do it only if you know you're gonna lose. You have to have the attitude that it's just a temporary measure, something you enjoy in bits and pieces.
``If you don't, you might as well just cement your yard - but even that won't really last. Before long the cement will crack.''
If you need inspiration firsthand, come take a look at this never-ending work of art. West's garden, house and studio are open by appointment. Call 626-7647.
by CNB