Published: Friday, July 26, 2013
By John Torsiello
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Two New Milford residents continue to take their love of gardening and landscaping to new levels, fueled by a passion for that sweet earth art that has gripped them ever since they were young sprouts.
Elisabeth Goedewaagen, owner of Outdoor Environments in Gaylordsville, and Richard Rosiello, a landscape designer at New Milford’s Meadowbrook Gardens, both earned their certificates as Connecticut Accredited Nursery Professionals from the Connecticut Nursery and Landscape Association this year.
The 13-week course teaches the basics of botany, plant identification and professional technical information, among other aspects of the profession.
“I am always trying to learn,” said Ms. Goedewaagen of her decision to take the course, which about 30 percent of those enrolled complete. “The teachers that taught the courses are well respected and I wanted to learn as much as I could from them. I also wanted to become accredited because it shows that I have a certain amount of knowledge that may set me apart from many other landscapers. Botany was interesting and challenging because I knew very little about it. Insects fascinate me and learning more about plant diseases is always important.”
Said Mr. Rosiello, “I am constantly enhancing my knowledge of gardening and landscaping. There are always new things you can learn about, how to deal with pests and diseases, working with new plants and the dynamics of soil structure and plant needs. It was all very informative.”
Ms. Goedewaagan says she has been interested in gardening since she was a young girl, when she started “paying attention when I lived with my family in England for a couple of years at the age of about 10 and read the book, “A Secret Garden,”still one of my favorite books. English gardens are beautiful, and so are the ones in Holland, where we often went to visit family during those years. One of my fondest memories is going to see the bulb gardens at Keukenhof with my Oma.” She says she simply loves being outdoors, enjoying “the color and fragrance or flowers and shrubs, insects, soil, sun, and rain.”
Ms. Goedewaagen didn’t plunge into gardening as a profession until later in life. She graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1976 and spent the next 25 years working as a chef. When she got married in 1986, her husband and she moved to Sherman and opened Food for Thought, a catering and takeout food establishment on Railroad Street in New Milford.
“We ran Food For Thought for about 10 years and then sold the business. I stayed in the culinary field for a couple more years but by then was definitely ready for a change. I took the Master Gardener program and got a job working for a local landscaping firm. During those years I also completed a landscape design program at the Institute of Ecosystem studies in Millbrook N.Y. After that I decided I was ready to strike out on my own and open my own business.”
She has lived in Gaylordsville for 15 years and has operated Outdoor Environments for the past 12 years. Many of her clients live in Washington, New Preston, New Milford, and Sherman, although she works in all area towns.
“I like to do garden renovation and pruning. We also do a great deal of garden maintenance, taking care of perennial, annual and shrub gardens. We plant everything from a container garden right up to full scale landscaping projects, designed by myself or other designers or architects. Continued…
However, my real love is growing vegetables, which I do in three large gardens, one at home, one at my shop and one nearby. What we don’t eat ourselves I sell at the vegetable stand at my shop.”
Lately, she has taken on several jobs making flower arrangements for parties.
“This is a lot of fun, creative, and something I’d like to learn more about and do more of. I work really long, hard days and my family puts up with a lot. My boyfriend, Brian, is right there for me whenever I need help. My son, Jake, works for me part time and so does my daughter, Melissa, when she’s not trying to grow veggies in New Mexico!”
She says she sets high standards for the quality of the work she and her assistants undertake and the materials they use.
“The compost we use is produced by a local facility. I seek out the people who grow the plants, not just resell them, and those are the plants we plant. The mulch we use is the best quality, also made locally. Most of the people who work with me have been with me for years, and all do an excellent job. This is why our gardens are successful.”
Mr. Rosiello recalled watching his grandfathers as a young boy as they cared for rose and tomato gardens while growing up in Brooklyn.
“They never really taught me how to garden but I watched how they cared for the plants and I found it interesting.”
Similar to Ms. Goedewaagan, Mr. Rosiello didn’t slide right into a career of working with his hands in the dirt as an adult. After attending high school, in New York City, he went to St. John’s University for a year and then acquired a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He was working as an artist, at a restaurant and doing some picture framing after college. But he caught the gardening bug and earned a landscape design certificate from the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx in the 1990s and a new career unfolded like the petals on a rose.
“I believe my schooling in visual arts has helped me immensely as a landscape designer. I got some great advice along the way from a lot of people, including Jan Johnson, a noted landscape architect who I call a friend and mentor. She told me that what we do is to move people through space and that stuck with me. It’s using plants and trees and shrubs and water features and rocks and walls to crate shapes and textures and color. And sometimes it’s how you use open space that affects how the garden looks.”
After being on his own for a number of years, Mr. Rosiello joined Meadowbrook Gardens about a year and a half ago and has a skilled staff that helps him install gardens and landscapes. He’s also working with masons on the creation of stone walls and likes to gets his hands on his work despite being mainly concerned with designing and then overseeing work on the gardens he is hired to construct. Continued…
“I could never be a pointer on a job,” he says with a smile. “I do spend a lot of time actually designing the gardens and landscaping and working with clients and I love that part of it. I try to find out what the person is after, what they like, so I ask them to show me photos of gardens they like. That gives me an idea of what to create. You have to make it for the clients because they are the ones who are going to enjoy it and live with it when it is done.”
Most of Mr. Rosiello’s clients are in Litchfield and Fairfield counties, although his work will take him into New York State on occasion and elsewhere in Connecticut.
“Being at Meadowbrook is wonderful because we design and build out of here. I have a place where I can have clients come and actually show them the plants, trees and shrubs we are talking about installing so they can get a real feel for what the garden will look like. It’s funny, I had a client who was insisting that she wanted an English formal garden but she kept saying, `No, that’s not it,’ when we were working through designs and plants. Turns out what she really wanted was a cottage garden and showing her what would be in that garden helped her understand what we were going to do for her.”
Mr. Rosiello moved to the area in 1986 and he and his wife, Elizabeth, have three children, James, Julia, and Theo. His wife is an artist and works for Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Both Ms. Goedewaaggan and Mr. Rosiello are members of the Connecticut Nursery and Landscape Association and the Mad Gardeners Association. Mr. Rosiello is a past president of the Connecticut Chapter of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers and is currently on the organization’s legislative committee. He is also a former member of the New Milford Inland Wetlands Commission. ■
To contact Ms. Goedewaagen, call 860-354-7008, or e-mail her at lgoed@aol.com. To contact Mr. Rosiello, call 860-350-4200. You may also visit www.meadowbrookgardens.com.
Two New Milford residents continue to take their love of gardening and landscaping to new levels, fueled by a passion for that sweet earth art that has gripped them ever since they were young sprouts.
Elisabeth Goedewaagen, owner of Outdoor Environments in Gaylordsville, and Richard Rosiello, a landscape designer at New Milford’s Meadowbrook Gardens, both earned their certificates as Connecticut Accredited Nursery Professionals from the Connecticut Nursery and Landscape Association this year.
The 13-week course teaches the basics of botany, plant identification and professional technical information, among other aspects of the profession.
“I am always trying to learn,” said Ms. Goedewaagen of her decision to take the course, which about 30 percent of those enrolled complete. “The teachers that taught the courses are well respected and I wanted to learn as much as I could from them. I also wanted to become accredited because it shows that I have a certain amount of knowledge that may set me apart from many other landscapers. Botany was interesting and challenging because I knew very little about it. Insects fascinate me and learning more about plant diseases is always important.”
Said Mr. Rosiello, “I am constantly enhancing my knowledge of gardening and landscaping. There are always new things you can learn about, how to deal with pests and diseases, working with new plants and the dynamics of soil structure and plant needs. It was all very informative.”
Ms. Goedewaagan says she has been interested in gardening since she was a young girl, when she started “paying attention when I lived with my family in England for a couple of years at the age of about 10 and read the book, “A Secret Garden,”still one of my favorite books. English gardens are beautiful, and so are the ones in Holland, where we often went to visit family during those years. One of my fondest memories is going to see the bulb gardens at Keukenhof with my Oma.” She says she simply loves being outdoors, enjoying “the color and fragrance or flowers and shrubs, insects, soil, sun, and rain.”
Ms. Goedewaagen didn’t plunge into gardening as a profession until later in life. She graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1976 and spent the next 25 years working as a chef. When she got married in 1986, her husband and she moved to Sherman and opened Food for Thought, a catering and takeout food establishment on Railroad Street in New Milford.
“We ran Food For Thought for about 10 years and then sold the business. I stayed in the culinary field for a couple more years but by then was definitely ready for a change. I took the Master Gardener program and got a job working for a local landscaping firm. During those years I also completed a landscape design program at the Institute of Ecosystem studies in Millbrook N.Y. After that I decided I was ready to strike out on my own and open my own business.”
She has lived in Gaylordsville for 15 years and has operated Outdoor Environments for the past 12 years. Many of her clients live in Washington, New Preston, New Milford, and Sherman, although she works in all area towns.
“I like to do garden renovation and pruning. We also do a great deal of garden maintenance, taking care of perennial, annual and shrub gardens. We plant everything from a container garden right up to full scale landscaping projects, designed by myself or other designers or architects.
However, my real love is growing vegetables, which I do in three large gardens, one at home, one at my shop and one nearby. What we don’t eat ourselves I sell at the vegetable stand at my shop.”
Lately, she has taken on several jobs making flower arrangements for parties.
“This is a lot of fun, creative, and something I’d like to learn more about and do more of. I work really long, hard days and my family puts up with a lot. My boyfriend, Brian, is right there for me whenever I need help. My son, Jake, works for me part time and so does my daughter, Melissa, when she’s not trying to grow veggies in New Mexico!”
She says she sets high standards for the quality of the work she and her assistants undertake and the materials they use.
“The compost we use is produced by a local facility. I seek out the people who grow the plants, not just resell them, and those are the plants we plant. The mulch we use is the best quality, also made locally. Most of the people who work with me have been with me for years, and all do an excellent job. This is why our gardens are successful.”
Mr. Rosiello recalled watching his grandfathers as a young boy as they cared for rose and tomato gardens while growing up in Brooklyn.
“They never really taught me how to garden but I watched how they cared for the plants and I found it interesting.”
Similar to Ms. Goedewaagan, Mr. Rosiello didn’t slide right into a career of working with his hands in the dirt as an adult. After attending high school, in New York City, he went to St. John’s University for a year and then acquired a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He was working as an artist, at a restaurant and doing some picture framing after college. But he caught the gardening bug and earned a landscape design certificate from the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx in the 1990s and a new career unfolded like the petals on a rose.
“I believe my schooling in visual arts has helped me immensely as a landscape designer. I got some great advice along the way from a lot of people, including Jan Johnson, a noted landscape architect who I call a friend and mentor. She told me that what we do is to move people through space and that stuck with me. It’s using plants and trees and shrubs and water features and rocks and walls to crate shapes and textures and color. And sometimes it’s how you use open space that affects how the garden looks.”
After being on his own for a number of years, Mr. Rosiello joined Meadowbrook Gardens about a year and a half ago and has a skilled staff that helps him install gardens and landscapes. He’s also working with masons on the creation of stone walls and likes to gets his hands on his work despite being mainly concerned with designing and then overseeing work on the gardens he is hired to construct.
“I could never be a pointer on a job,” he says with a smile. “I do spend a lot of time actually designing the gardens and landscaping and working with clients and I love that part of it. I try to find out what the person is after, what they like, so I ask them to show me photos of gardens they like. That gives me an idea of what to create. You have to make it for the clients because they are the ones who are going to enjoy it and live with it when it is done.”
Most of Mr. Rosiello’s clients are in Litchfield and Fairfield counties, although his work will take him into New York State on occasion and elsewhere in Connecticut.
“Being at Meadowbrook is wonderful because we design and build out of here. I have a place where I can have clients come and actually show them the plants, trees and shrubs we are talking about installing so they can get a real feel for what the garden will look like. It’s funny, I had a client who was insisting that she wanted an English formal garden but she kept saying, `No, that’s not it,’ when we were working through designs and plants. Turns out what she really wanted was a cottage garden and showing her what would be in that garden helped her understand what we were going to do for her.”
Mr. Rosiello moved to the area in 1986 and he and his wife, Elizabeth, have three children, James, Julia, and Theo. His wife is an artist and works for Mary Kay Cosmetics.
Both Ms. Goedewaaggan and Mr. Rosiello are members of the Connecticut Nursery and Landscape Association and the Mad Gardeners Association. Mr. Rosiello is a past president of the Connecticut Chapter of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers and is currently on the organization’s legislative committee. He is also a former member of the New Milford Inland Wetlands Commission. ■
To contact Ms. Goedewaagen, call 860-354-7008, or e-mail her at lgoed@aol.com. To contact Mr. Rosiello, call 860-350-4200. You may also visit www.meadowbrookgardens.com.
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