Master Gardeners Striving to “Get It Wright”

Auburn, April 25, 2003 --- Last year, Shoals Area Master Gardeners were entrusted with the landscaping challenge of a lifetime: restoring the garden of one of Alabama’s greatest architectural landmarks.

The home, acquired by the city of Florence from Mildred Bookholtz Rosenbaum, a former New York City fashion model and wife of the late Stanley Rosenbaum, a University of North Alabama English professor, is the state’s only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed structure.

(Left: Delores "Dee" Hubbert, left, and Margaret "Marg" Webb, right, pose with Barbara Broach, director for Arts and Museums for the City of Florence.  Hubbert and Webb, along with other members of the Shoals Area Master Gardeners, recently restored the garden of Alabama's only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed structure.)

It is also considered a prime example of Usonian architecture, a style developed and perfected by Wright, entirely with middle-income families such as the Rosenbaums in mind – one that emphasized openness and spaciousness and blending in with the natural contours of the land.

Barbara Broach, director of Arts and Museums for the City of Florence, knew what was at stake when she undertook restoration of the home. 

“The whole world would be watching,” she recalls the late Florence Mayor Eddie Frost telling her shortly before restoration began. As it turned out, they were very prophetic words indeed.

“All along, our attitude has been that we had only one shot at this, and we wanted to do it right,” or, in this case, “Wright,” as one Master Gardener is fond of saying. 

“If the specifications called for copper finishing instead of aluminum, we stuck with copper,” Broach says. “And if it called for cypress instead of a less expensive material, we opted for cypress.”

Broach insisted on the same exacting standards for the garden restoration, which she entrusted to members of the Shoals Area Master Gardeners.

“I knew of the Master Gardeners and some of their work on different projects, and I knew how sensitive they were to these sorts of jobs.”

Master Gardener volunteers serve as the horticultural right hand of Alabama Cooperative Extension offices throughout the state, lending their expertise to a wide array of educational and beautification projects.

“Master Gardeners represent the essence of Cooperative Extension work – tying people together and getting organizations working together for the common good,” says Ronald Lane, Lauderdale County Extension coordinator.

From the outset, all seven volunteers agreed that the garden should be restored to look as much as possible like the original Japanese garden established after the Rosenbaums completed a Wright-designed addition to the home in 1949. Equally important, they wanted it to complement Wright’s overall vision for the home.

“When you see this space, you understand that this garden has to be serene because the house is designed to be contemplative,” says Margaret Webb, who coordinated the project.  “Everything has to be flowing and peaceful. So the Japanese garden, which was the original concept for this home, really was the only thing that would suit this space.”

The first step was determining what could be salvaged from the pieces that remained.  The small pool located near the center of the garden was cleaned out and installed with a timed pump to convey the same undulating effect reflected in the home’s design.

Volunteers also were determined to retain all of the stepping stones and bricks included in the original garden, ever mindful of the need to arrange these materials to complement the home’s “serene, contemplative” effect.

“Each brick was laid a specific way for a specific purpose and follows a specific line to the house,” says volunteer Delores “Dee” Hubbert, who credits the late Jim Schultz, who passed away before completion of the six-month project, with designing the steps and ensuring that each stone was “laid perfectly in place.”

The most challenging task of all was deciding what to do with the only survivor of the original garden – a badly weathered Japanese maple tree located near the pond.

“We wanted to keep it because it was original to the house, but it was half dead – or alive, depending on how you look at it – and in very bad shape,” Hubbert recalls.

Fortunately for them, one of the Master Gardeners, John Landers, a bonsai specialist, immediately began nursing the tree back to health. He began foliar feeding each branch of the tree to enhance its growth and grafting cuttings into barren parts of the tree to restore its shape.

The next step involved applying wires to the tree so that it could be shaped to mesh with the contours of the home and garden. 

Landers’ hard work appears to be working. Lately, volunteers have been struck by the vigor the tree has shown since therapy began and are confident it will survive and grow to become one of the garden’s most striking features.

As a final flourish, they added a bench, the size, colors and textures of which were chosen to match the other elements of the garden.  

Since restoration of the home and adjoining garden last year, Wright devotees from all over the world have visited the Rosenbaum home. Many of them have seen 90 percent of the architect’s surviving structures and, like most experts, approach any site with a critically discerning eye. 

Even so, Broach says, the response to both the home and garden has been entirely positive -- a fact she attributes in part to the diligent efforts of the Master Gardeners.

“Not once did I have to say one word and have them change a single thing,” Broach recalls.  “After the first work day, I knew they were headed in the ‘Wright’ direction.”

(Source: Ronald D. Lane, Lauderdale County Extension Coordinator, 334-760-5860.)

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