As far as folks in the historic preservation business are concerned, the trouble with gardens is that they grow. The art of landscape design is a dialogue with the forces of nature. And that makes the history of landscapes slippery to grasp.
The science behind preserving buildings and museum objects gives us tools to keep them looking more or less the same for years on end. But landscapes are made up of living ecosystems in which change is naturally and constantly present.
Multiply that by thousands of years of human impact, and landscapes quickly become some of our most complicated cultural assets.
This suits the George Read II House & Gardens in New Castle just fine. As part of the Delaware Historical Society, its modern mission is to “educate, inspire, and empower people and communities.” The complexities of the Read House grounds are an opportunity to create meaning and connections across a wide audience.
Last year the society launched a campaign to make the Read House landscape socially, environmentally, and financially sustainable for the next generation. DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, a Philadelphia- and Indianapolis-based firm known for “empathy-driven” design, has helped us grasp the many threads of this site’s history and weave them together with the wisdom and needs of our contemporary community.
Their team led participants through several series of exercises to learn how people use the grounds, which stories they value most, and where they envision continuity or change.
We then squared those contributions with a body of historical research, including a quarter-century of archaeological work led by Lu Ann De Cunzo of the University of Delaware.
The history might catch you by surprise. George Read I — signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution — maintained a swept dirt yard, a far cry from Old New Castle’s lush gardens of today.
In the early 1800s, George Read II aspired to create pleasure gardens around his extravagant new mansion next door. They never came to be. It was the Couper family, who bought the Read House in the 1840s, who introduced the three-part garden that now stretches from the Strand to Second Street.
In the 1920s, Philip and Lydia Laird turned the Coupers’ kitchen garden into a swimming pool with a pool house and arbors, and created a yacht basin with Irénée du Pont. His son, Irénée Jr., remembered them as a fun and attractive couple whose “interests were historic preservation and social drinking.”
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Early records of the Couper gardens are scarce. They seem to have been designed by Robert Buist, a respected Philadelphia nurseryman. However, the earliest evidence of plantings or layout comes from 1880s photographs, 40 years after the initial planting. Imagine how much might change in your own garden over 40 years.
Who managed the change and continuity? For decades it was Aaron Roz, an African American gardener whose name has seldom been cited. We expect to make his role more apparent through signage along a newly accessible entrance path. The path will lead from the front gate to back door of the house, with no stairs, passing through the parterre garden where House & Garden pictured an unidentified black gardener — possibly Roz — in 1901.
The society will announce a full design concept later this year. Meanwhile, picture this:
An elegant elliptical path leads down to the waterfront, echoing a design by William Birch for George Read II that was seemingly never constructed. The idyllic island Birch proposed now sits on land, drawing you out toward a closer view of the shoreline ecology and the old marina. Turn around and you’ll see the house from a river vantage, as Read hoped travelers would.
Inside the ellipse is an expansive great lawn for gathering or strolling, recalling the gregarious Laird years that still reverberate in living memory. Its elevation rises almost imperceptibly, then drops off to the riverbank, creating a buffer against storm surges. Neighbors can link up to it with protective earthworks on their own properties.
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Outside the ellipse is a colorful native meadow, a way to reduce the carbon footprint of mowing and absorb the effects of recurring floods. The meadow gives way to lawn as it approaches the Strand, softening the interface between river ecosystems and New Castle’s manicured streetscape.
By the time this column appears, I’ll have moved on to new ventures after five years leading the Read House & Gardens.
But the vision for a sustainable landscape will live on because it’s been authored jointly by so many stakeholders.
Stay tuned.
Brenton Grom left the Delaware Historical Society as Director of the George Read II House & Gardens in mid-July to become Executive Director of the Webb Deane Stevens Museum in Wethersfield, CT.
More:EXCLUSIVE: This Delaware du Pont estate may be worth $50 million. Look who’s buying it.
