By Will Rowlands
Bill Noble didn’t start out with a degree in horticulture, botany or landscape design. He grew
up in Norwalk and had an assortment of jobs as a young man, including construction and market gardening. He got a lot of experience when he landed a job in the ’70s at the property of Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Cornish, NH.
Saint-Gaudens was a prominent sculptor in the 1800s. As many as 100 other artists and performers joined him there and the area eventually became the Cornish Art Colony. It was a place where artists such as Maxfield Parrish and Frederic Remington, and performers like Ethel Barrymore and Isadora Duncan, could escape the summer heat in an environment that was reminiscent of the hills of Tuscany. Many of the residents created gardens. Stephen Parrish built Northcote, for example, another site where Noble worked on a restoration.
We’re all fortunate that he got those gigs. It introduced him to great gardens and fostered a life-long passion for their preservation. (He’s a former director of preservation for The Garden Conservancy.)
His new book is about Bragg Hill, an old farmhouse and property he bought in Norwich, VT. Many of Vermont’s early settlers were from Connecticut. For a time, Vermont was even known as “New Connecticut,” which explains why so many of the place names are familiar to nutmeggers.
“The evolution of this design, how I went about giving the garden form and structure with plants, is the heart of this book. My greatest challenge was to make a garden in harmony with the expansive landscape of the Connecticut River Valley surrounding it, as well as one that would be manageable in scope, yet diverse enough to be interesting.”
The book is about Bragg Hill but it’s also about all of the gardens – and the people responsible for them – that have influenced Noble over the years. “The design that emerged was shaped not only by the place and its history, but also by my work with other gardens, both historic and contemporary.”
It’s also about the plants … and there are a lot of those. Noble is a collector who likes to experiment. When necessary, he moves plants around the property seeking an environment where they will thrive.
Noble came up with a list of 18 guiding principles for Bragg Hill. Some of them involve artistic concepts relating to views, sightlines, vantage points, screens and creating spaces. Some are things we should all consider when pondering our yards and gardens: native plants and ecology. His vegetable garden is completely organic; the only inputs are compost and organic fertilizer.
The book is enjoyable on several levels. I was particularly interested in the historical aspects.
A number of familiar people and places pop up in the book … Arnold Arboretum, Broken Arrow Nursery, Frank Cabot, Garden in the Woods, George Schoellkopf (Hollister House Garden) and Marco Polo Stufano (Wave Hill).
Noble has learned a lot from his varied experiences and we can all learn something from Spirit of Place, including the inside scoop on the stars of his garden on Bragg Hill. Just be sure they’re not considered invasive in Connecticut by checking the Invasive Plant List at cipwg.uconn.edu
Always a good idea before planting!
SPIRIT OF PLACE – The Making of a New England Garden
Hardcover $35. 288 pages, 7.6″ x 10.1″
Also available in eBook, Kindle & Nook
ISBN 978-1-60469-850-3
Timber Press – timberpress.com
Barnes & Noble – barnesandnoble.com
Amazon – amazon.com
More info at billnoblegardens.com
