WHETHER IT’S THE PRECISION buzz cut of a yew tree or the sweet essence of scented geraniums, it’s delightful to segue into fall savoring the botanical elegance on display in Columbus’ public gardens.By Betsa Marsh
Gardens blossom
under the city’s
blend of cultural and
horticultural energy
Franklin Park
Conservatory .It may be one of Popular Science’s Top 10 High-Tech Cities, but the state capital of Ohio also relishes a good dig in the dirt.
THE CITY HAS always dedicated space for parks and gardens. To discover one of its most famous, head to East Town Street, look out over Old Deaf School Park, and let the traffic speeding past drift into the background. Take in strolling couples, frolicking children, sniffing dogs—even a monkey—all sculpted from shrubs. Do you feel as though you’ve seen this somewhere before?
You have—hanging, perhaps, in the Art Institute of Chicago. Columbus created its own take on A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, French Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat’s masterpiece. Even though you’re in the heart of Ohio, you can imagine yourself among the Parisians in the painting, enjoying a summer day along the Seine.
Columbus’ Topiary Garden (topiarygarden. org) is a visual pun—a landscape of a painting of a landscape. Sculptor James T. Mason envisioned this slice of Parisian life and welded the metal armatures in exaggerated perspective, with the largest figures measuring 12 feet tall.
As they grew, nearly 80 yew trees filled in the shapes of 54 topiary people, dogs, even a monkey. The little boats of Seurat’s imagination set out upon the pond, a stand-in for the Seine, with sails of white clematis.
Mason and the gardeners stayed true to the pointil-list masterpiece, but the sculptor couldn’t resist taking one little artistic liberty: Can you find the cat that he added?
LANDSCAPE PAINTING Columbus’ Topiary Garden is the only topiary representation of a painting— Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—in the world.
JUST AS YOU SPOT BUSTLES at the Topiary Garden, it’s easy to imagine ladies in white muslin gowns drifting among the palms of the Franklin Park Conservatory (www.fpconservatory.org). The glass-roofed Victorian Palm House, built in 1895, showcases more than 40 palm species, with pathways leading to plants from other climes: Himalayan Mountains, rain forest, desert and Pacific Islands.
Franklin Park is also the world’s only public botanical garden to own a signature collection of glass artist Dale Chihuly’s works—more than 3,000 items valued at nearly $7 million. Chihuly admirers love to look high and low for his sparkling pieces nuzzling the plants. The entire collection will be on display next year—a dazzling complement to the glass house.
EVEN MORE HISTORIC is down-town’s Kelton House Museum & Garden (keltonhouse.com). The elegant façade hides the home’s secrets—both its owners’ brave roles in the Underground Railroad and the Victorian garden tucked behind.
Sophia and Fernando Cortez Kelton, who built the home in 1852, were ardent abolitionists, and historians believe they hid escaping slaves in their barn and dry cistern. They even took in an ill young slave and raised her with their own children.
Kelton House Museum
& Garden
Grace Kelton donated her family home upon her death in 1975. The back garden reflects the interior decorator’s horticultural style and world travels, dotted with statues and urns she collected along the way.
Parterre beds pop with pink impatiens and ivy entwines a trellis.
Guardians of Grace’s vision have replaced an old arbor with a graceful curved pergola, training silver lace vines up its white columns and flanking it with saucer magnolias.
A specimen tree towers in the front yard. The bald cypress— “looking healthy,” museum director Georgeanne Reuter reports—is the last of many originally planted along East Town Street, when the Kelton House was surrounded by pastureland. Columbus has moved on, but the tree, the home and the garden endure.
With impatiens like confetti on the lawn and magnolia scenting the air, Columbus’ green spaces await inquisitive exploration.
MIDWEST AIRLINES offers daily flights to and from Columbus. Details can be found at midwestairlines.com.
ANTIQUES & GARDENS FAIR
(NEAR FRANKLIN PARK CONSERVATORY)
SEPT. 18-21, 2008; 10 A.M.-5 P.M.
These days are devoted to both home and garden, with more than 40 dealers selling antiques. Admission to the 10th annual fair is $10 for adults and $5 for children. fpconservatory.org
Herbal Essence
LEARN ABOUT THE ROLE THAT HERBS PLAY IN THE CULINARY, MEDICAL AND DECORATIVE WORLDS.
As you connect the green dots between the city’s gardens, it’s easy to follow your nose, too, to Gahanna, the Herb Capital of Ohio.
This suburb, just 15 minutes from downtown Columbus, is heady with fresh aromas.
Sensory central is the Ohio Herb Education Center (ohioherbcenter. org), in the 1827 Ridenour House that’s surrounded by scented, culinary, medicinal and biblical herb gardens.
Herbalists lead workshops, helping chefs weave parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme into their dishes. Visitors can learn the secrets to making their own skincare products and aromatherapy gifts.
The center’s gardeners dream up herbal blends and give them whimsical labels that say things like “packaged by elves living in little villages, under trees.”
The entire suburb has gone herb crazy, with Geroux Herb Gardens next to Gahanna City Hall and a goosefoot herb garden on the Historical Society grounds. Other goosefoot gardens, named for their webbed-foot look, are spreading like spearmint through the town.
OCT. 4
Sample lemon-balm tea and lavender jelly during the free Herb Harvest Day.
