Even in a dense, brick and concrete city like Hoboken you can still find little green gardens that give their owners great pleasure.
For 15 years the Hoboken Historical Museum has been highlighting these hidden spaces with its annual Secret Gardens Tour. On Sunday over 350 people walked this year’s guided two-hour tour, which took them in groups of twenty to ten homes.
The museum started the tour to raise money as it was moving to its current location at 1301 Hudson Street. Tickets for this year’s tour cost $20 with advance purchase and $25 on Sunday.
The tour is sponsored by Hufnagel Landscaping, which designed many of the participating gardens. Valerie Hufnagel, who now owns the business her family started in 1945, is vice-president of the museum’s board of trustees.
Each year the Museum coordinates with the Hoboken Garden Club to find gardens for the tour. Valerie D’Antonio, who helped found the club in 2000, said it has roughly 75 members who meet for workshops, field trips and plant exchanges.
D’Antonio said that gardening in a city like Hoboken is more difficult than doing so elsewhere because of a lack of space, and the fact that much of what is available is shaded from the sun by nearby buildings. But, she said, gardeners have adapted.
“People are gardening on balconies, in backyards, on stoops, it’s a mix,” D’Antonio said.
The gardens on the tour this year ranged from neatly landscaped lawns with concrete patios, to others overflowing with abundant plants.
Tim, owner of the tour’s fifth stop, showed off the various fruits and vegetables he grows in his personally maintained garden, including tomatoes, strawberries, beets, radishes, figs and grapes. “We’ve actually got too many grapes,” he said.
Many of the owners who met with the tour groups said they treasure most the separation their gardens provide from the rest of the city.
“It’s a sanctuary,” said Ariana, who lives at the tour’s sixth stop, uptown on Bloomfield Street. She said her favorite feature of her garden is a flower lined pathway that leads to an antique wooden swing. Someone sitting on the swing would be shaded by a three-story high maple tree, and could enjoy looking at a catalpa tree that acts as a natural canopy and holds decorative lanterns.
Christina, who lives at the tour’s first stop with her husband Dominic, said she wanted their garden to replicate the vacation home they owned in the Poconos and sold while they were buying their Castle Point home in 2007.
“We wanted all those elements (from the Poconos) in an urban setting,” she said. The backyard features a frost-sandstone patio with deck chairs, a heated stainless steel plunging pool, and a two-story playhouse for the couple’s children, all lined by planting beds full of various flowers. From the deck chairs one has a straight view of the Manhattan skyline.
If all of the gardens now provide their owners with pleasure, some first elicited frustration for the hard work they required.
Theresa, owner of the tour’s tenth and final stop, almost saw her dream garden ruined right from the start. She had hired some contractors to build a patio in the backyard of her home on uptown Bloomfield Street, and as the workers were digging they hit a large and immovable boulder.
“We tried everything,” Theresa said. “They told me they needed to dynamite, and I said not in Hoboken, not here,” she said.
Theresa said she was initially upset at being stuck with the boulder, until a friend suggested she turn it into a fountain. Now water shoots from a hose concealed by some smaller rocks placed at the top, washes over the big boulder and falls into a pool built at the base.
“It turned out to be fantastic,” Theresa said. “We made lemons out of lemonade.”
Speak Your Mind