Garden Ideas and Outdoor Living in Buffalo

Another great gardening media hit for Buffalo! This time, it’s 75 Lancaster Avenue, the garden of Jim Locke and Annabelle Irey. Garden Ideas and Outdoor Living is a Better Homes & Gardens (BH&G) Special Interest Publication, the current (Summer 08) issue features an eight-page spread on this garden that is a very popular stop on Garden Walk Buffalo.

The eight-page spread features tips on getting a lush look in your garden, and taming rambunctious gardens; an illustrated map of their property; and 11 photos of the garden including close-up shots of some of their more unique plantings.

Simply known locally as “Mary’s Garden,” it is one of the most lush gardens on the Walk.

Jim and his first wife, Mary, started the garden. Mary lost her battle with cancer soon after the garden was completed. Annabelle appeared on the scene a couple years later with lots of gardening “baggage,”

including lots of annuals, vines, and a family heritage of gardening.

You’ll have to pick up the magazine to read about their collection of vines and their over 200 planters!

I bought my copy of the issue at a Barnes & Noble. Jim & Irene found copies at Wegmans, our local grocery store chain.

The garden’s most outstanding feature was not even mentioned in the article – Cornelious the basset hound. I’ll probably see him walking Jim & Annabelle later. He’s insistent they get out and walk every day.

Garden Ideas & Outdoor Living is published four times a year by Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest Media. It is available by subscription (www.bhg.com/gardenideas) and at newsstands throughout the United States and Canada.

Garden Ideas & Outdoor Living is the oldest special interest gardening publication in America, tracing its history back to 1940. The editor, Luke Miller, is a Western New York native, hailing from Rochester.

Here’s a photo of Toronto photographer Andreas Trauttsmansdorff with Better Homes & Gardens story producer, Donna Talley, taking the photos in the article last July.

To come full circle, my very first blog post (here) was about the BH&G photo shoot in this garden. BH&G will also be back this July to shoot two more Buffalo gardens.

Just to show how close our great gardens are to each other, see that dark pink house in the middle of the photo at the top of this page?
The garden of that house (72 Lancaster) was recently featured on the covers of both Garden Gate magazine (Jan/Feb 2008) and People Places Plants (Early Summer 07). Lancaster Avenue is a street of great gardens (did I mention I live on Lancaster?)

Walk through this garden in July!
Unlike with most other gardens you see in national gardening magazines, you can actually come and walk through this one. Below is a list of other Buffalo gardens, and the magazines they can be seen in, as well as links to other posts and articles. During Garden Walk Buffalo, you can visit them all!

This past year saw Buffalo gardens and Garden Walk press appear in these national publications:

The San Francisco Chronicle
(1 North Pearl, 440 Massachusetts)
MSN City Guide
Garden Design (Martin House Conservatory)
Garden Gate (755 West Delavan, 39 Granger and a cover photo of 72 Lancaster)
Great Backyard Gardens (415 Summer, 63 Norwood, 2 Union Place and 604 Bird)
Great Gardens, Solutions for Small Spaces (24 Park, 75 Lancaster, 39 Granger)
People Places Plants (24 Park, 415 Summer, 215 Lancaster, 42 Orton and a cover photo of 72 Lancaster!)

Tuesday, May 13