All of Blithewold’s gardens are wonderful, with their own unique characteristics, but two of them have become critically endangered. Blithewold’s location at the mouth of Bristol Harbor, …
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All of Blithewold’s gardens are wonderful, with their own unique characteristics, but two of them have become critically endangered.
Blithewold’s location at the mouth of Bristol Harbor, with a view up the East Passage of Narragansett Bay is an enviable one. But sometimes, “waterfront” is too much of a good thing — like when the harbor flows freely into the century-old Water and Rock Gardens, located at the northwestern corner of the property.
The Rock Garden was the favorite of Bessie Pardee Van Wickle Mc Kee, the lady of the manor at the turn of the 19th century. She called it Little Mt. Hope, and had a great deal of influence in its design and the selection of its featured small-scale plantings, and evergreen trees and shrubs. Likewise, the Water Garden, with its water lily-filled pond, arched stone bridge, and Asian-inspired landscape elements, was a collaboration between the outgoing landscape architect John DeWolf, Blithewold’s first caretaker, John Best, and Bessie.
For about a century, these gardens delighted Van Wickle and Mc Kee family, friends and guests, and more recently the public. And for most of that time, they existed in close proximity — but not under — the harbor.
According to Dan Christina, Blithewold’s Director of Horticulture, that has changed in recent years.
Destructive high tides have become routine
“The land is slowly sublimating, that's what happens along a coastal area,” said Christina. “But that's not what's causing all of the issues. We have sea level rise, coupled with the fact that we get more intense storms, more often. And then you have a high tide, with a full moon, or a tropical storm, and a storm surge. It’s all those factors at the same time, which tend to happen at the same time, that causes the most damage.
“It used to be that it would only happen with high-powered storms, like Gloria or Sandy. Now, we're getting those every full moon high tide, or every northeast storm.”
It’s not just about the water coming up and then subsiding again. Salt water infiltration damages the plants in the garden that are not tolerant to that; a lot of the specimen trees and plant were selected from other areas of the world, chosen to complement the space and the design of the garden at the time, but not for their tolerance to salt water.
The horticultural staff at Blithewold has known for several years that something needed to be done.
“These gardens are the last designed by the women of Blithewold,” said Christina. That’s important, it puts the onus back on saving the space. Whereas there was a time where this scope of work seemed like just too big of a project, we’ve reached the point where if we don’t do something, we are going to lose these gardens….and we can’t let that happen.”
According to Christina, the project has come into focus in the last several years as an achievable goal — one that they now have both the plans and funds to tackle.
Building a berm
The 650-foot earthen berm that Blithewold will be building to save their lowest-lying gardens is a highly engineered project, with specific details as to the construction materials, the exact layout, and the grade changes. In addition to being designed to prevent storm and high tide infiltration, it will allow for the continued capture of surface water and runoff down to that low-lying area of the property.
The plan involves filling in a 2400 square foot section of the existing saltwater marsh in order to properly construct the berm, while creating about 8900 square feet of new marsh to make a more continuous marsh area.
That will permit the proper kind of water infiltration, and then enable outflow back to the bay, which will also help mitigate the wetness around the garden, even in times when there has not been recent infiltration.
The project will also restore the man-made topographical feature of the of the pond, the liner of which was disturbed 20 or 30 years ago. Since then, the pond has not been able to consistently maintain its water level. The construction of the berm will allow Blithewold to install some gate and flow valves, that'll maintain consistent moisture and consistent water levels in the pond, and the plantings will have a much more regular habitat and they'll be able to really thrive in the way it was intended in the 1920s and 1930s when it was installed.
The berm itself will have a maximum grade of about seven and a half feet, which means that in some areas of the garden it will add slope and in other areas, like near the top of the rock garden, it will be imperceptible. “We're just taking advantage of an open area and filling it in with stone and soil and then planting on top of that,” said Christina. “We aren’t building a jetty. It is going to be an organic component to the landscape. Most visitors won’t notice it at all.”
‘First in New England’
The project is out to bid and Christina is hoping to award the contract and get to work as soon as possible, ideally in the spring, to be ready for summer. As the complete eradication of infiltration is not expected, the Rock and Water Gardens will be getting makeovers to incorporate more resilient plants. “We’re taking the imprint of what that rock garden was in Bessie’s time and scaling it to what we can do now, with much more of a focus on native plants that can tolerate that kind of exposure,” said Christina.
“Blithewold is one of very few public gardens and arboretums located on a coastal shoreline and the first in New England to take action to mitigate the impact of increasing frequency of tidal and storm flooding,” said Karen Binder, Blithewold’s Executive Director. “The earthen berm will protect one of Blithewold's most treasured garden spaces and be engineered in such a way to be not only aesthetically pleasing, but extremely effective for the next 50 to 75 years. The board of directors and I are so grateful that so many donors and foundations have responded so generously to make this project a reality.”
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