Queen Of Spades Digs Into Legacy of Design Master
by Janis Gibson

Approaching Stone Orchard, a Redding garden on view July 21 as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program, the senses come alive. It starts with the visual lushness, the abundance of greenery in a multitude of shapes and hues. There is a desire to touch the varied textures, the coolness of stone or the small feathery leaves of a Japanese maple. Bird calls and the sound of wings fill the air, and the sweet smell of spring lilacs occasionally wafts by. Farther into the garden, the budding berry bushes hold promise of delectable fresh raspberries and blueberries, bursting with flavor. Stone Orchard is actually a series of garden rooms covering three acres, which landscape designer Douglas Maclise started in 1990. He continued to implement and adjust his master plan until his death in 2002. For the last three years, the garden has been maintained by advanced master gardener and landscape designer Terry Karpen.

The garden rooms are entered through an old scrolled-metal gate. A few feet down the bluestone path, a second gate appears, a dark-green wooden moon gate with roses growing overhead. Everywhere the eye lights, form, color and texture are evident. Small and large bursts of color from flowers both delicate and sturdy pop into view.

A leisurely stroll through the gardens reveals a variety of surfaces: bluestone, gravel, lawn, a path mowed through a meadow. Along the way, the stroller will come upon more gates, fences and arbors made from cedar and mountain laurel branches, as well as large sculptures scattered amid the plantings. There is also abundant stonework: walls, placed boulders, patios, and even an elevated stone terrace with stone-slab railings hand-cut by Maclise himself.

And of course there are the plantings. Terry calls Stone Orchard “a collector’s garden, containing hundreds of unusual trees and shrubs, including dwarf conifer and conifer, hydrangea, boxwood, holly, rhododendron, magnolia, tree peony, weeping katsura, Japanese maple, metasequoia, dogwood, beech, and a Korean lilac hedge, with flowers that bloom in succession from March to October.” Maclise liked the effect of clustered varieties of the same plant, such as the beech ellipse, which features six different varieties, and the peonies that border a lawn. Assortments of hosta meander alongside gravel paths, and always there are places that invite the stroller to sit and relax for a spell – a poolscape from a terraced hillside, a woodland meditation garden with split-rock bench and white azalea accents, and the rustic pergola room.

Terry describes Stone Orchard as “a magical place,” and considers it an honor to be the caretaker to the legacy of Douglas Maclise. How she got there is a meandering story in itself. If Terry Karpen’s name seems familiar, perhaps it’s because you know her from a previous business, Queen Of Hearts. A pastry chef extraordinaire, Terry first began creating delicious desserts and wondrous wedding cakes in 1990. She worked from a commercial kitchen in her log-cabin home, tucked into the Redding woods, where she has lived with her husband, musician Dan Bonis, since 1988. Prior to that she was a professional chef, entering the business “when there were few women in the kitchen,” she said. It was also a time when “this new contemporary cooking was starting to evolve, which emphasized fresh, natural ingredients prepared simply but elegantly. It was the beginning of the reinvention of food, popularized in this area by people like Carole Peck. It was very exciting.”

The transition from food to gardening was gradual, but in a way, full circle for Terry. In the 1970s, she took a work-study program at the Bartlett Arboretum in Stamford, which was then part of the University of Connecticut. “My love of gardening goes way back. I had majored in sociology in college, and Bartlett offered a certified horticultural-therapy program, but I wasn’t well suited for the profession. Through a grant at Bartlett, however, I took classes on horticulture and landscape design and worked on the arboretum grounds, and I loved it. But when the grant ended, so did my job.

“As much as I enjoyed it, it was not obvious to me at the time to make a career of it. It wasn’t fashionable to be a garden designer then, and today’s programs didn’t exist.” About six years ago, feeling isolated and confined in a kitchen that had long been her “personal play room,” she noticed an article in The Redding Pilot about the master gardener program offered through the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension System, which emphasized horticulture, botany and soil science. Recalling how much she had enjoyed her classes at the arboretum, she decided to give it a try. She subsequently trained in landscape design at the New York Botanical Garden.

“I know this sounds corny,” Terry admitted, “but shortly after I began, it became apparent to me that this is where I belong. I didn’t intend to pursue gardening as a career, but I knew it was where I was headed.” As she began discussing the gardening classes with customers, several pointed to her wall of wedding-cake photos, noting her use of live and created flowers in her designs. “I had never been consciously aware of that,” she said, “of treating each cake like a little landscape.”

Upon hearing of her studies in landscape design, a woman who had been a cake customer since 1995 told her, “If you like gardens, you should come and tour mine in the spring and meet my companion, who is a landscape designer.” Unfortunately, Terry did not get to the garden for more than 18 months, by which time Douglas Maclise had died and his helper had returned to his hometown. “Even though it had been neglected for a while, I had never seen anything like it,” Terry recalled, “and I sent her a card saying how magical it was.” Terry was quite pleasantly surprised when a year later a mutual friend suggested the owner hire Terry to do some garden maintenance, and she did. That was three years ago.

“I began to think, maybe I’d like to do this professionally, and if I do, I’ll need a business name,” said Terry, as she laughed at her choice of the obvious one – Queen Of Spades. Her new business card adds, “Gardens Created & Cared For.” She began gradually shutting down her pastry business about two years ago, and now designs, installs and maintains gardens on a full-time basis. As Terry works to preserve Douglas Maclise’s legacy at Stone Orchard, he has become her teacher, not only through his gardens but through the papers he left behind. “He was a distinguished designer,” said Terry, “and I have been given full access to his workshop and file cabinets ... his entire career is in those cabinets. The design for every garden he did, as well as before and after photos. Being at this property is a great education in so many ways.”