Earthy Pleasures: Gardeners enjoy the many fruits of their laborsAuthor(s): JILL SCHACHNER CHANENSource: ABA Journal, Vol. 83, No. 5 (MAY 1997), pp. 94-95Published by: American Bar AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27839569 .

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OUT OF THE OFFICE

Earthy Pleasures

Gardeners enjoy the many fruits of their labors

BY JILL SCHACHNER CHANEN For 13 years, Sharon Eiseman

had marked the passage of winter through a century-old grape arbor in her back yard. Every spring, as the sun began to warm the earth, she would watch the rays charm the tangle of vines back to life.

As the days lengthened, the vines

would rise skyward, leaf and then bud, producing a deep, dark, burgundy fruit.

With the grapes came raccoons, birds,

opossums and bees, all eager to feast on the fruits of the vines.

But three years ago the sun could no

longer work its magic on her grape arbor. The vines refused to rise after yet anoth er harsh Midwest winter. A crestfallen Eiseman was left with nothing more than a memory and a gnarled mass of dehydrated scrub.

Faced with the prospect of a barren yard and her hus band's threat to fill in the arbor with de cidedly lower-main tenance AstroTurf, Eiseman allowed a friend to drag her to a garden center.

She was imme diately taken by the riot of colors, textures and scents, as well as her complete lack of horticultural knowledge.

"I did not know the difference between an annual and a perenni al and a shrub," says Eiseman, 55, a local government lawyer with Ancel, Glink, Diamond, Cope & Bush in Chicago. "But I began to

Jill Schachner Chanen, a law yer, writes regularly for the ABA Journal.

learn things. That is exciting for someone my age.

"I became a lawyer at age 37.1 love my work. I find it fascinating. But discovering that you have an interest or talent that you never knew you had or could develop is exciting."

Eiseman began filling her yard

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with hearty junipers and hollies. She added barberry for texture, a

dogwood for height and sprinkled in azaleas, hostas, impatiens and begonias for bursts of color.

Then, just as her grape arbor had done before, life began to burst forth from the ground.

"There is a style to my garden that is an expression of my person ality," she says. "It is somewhere between structured and wild. There is a design, but there are places that do not quite fit. But that is an

other thing I love about gardening ?I can try some new things, and it is OK if it doesn't work. I can pull it out and try something new the next year."

In her enthusiasm for garden ing, Eiseman has a lot of company. In fact, gardening is said to be the

most popular outdoor activity world wide, according to horticul tural societies. Retail sales of flowers, plants, seeds and garden supplies surpass the billion-dollar mark each year.

"In gardens, there is a tremendous opportunity for personal expression, and that is really important for people today because things are be coming so faceless," says Phil Eichler, proprietor of The Urban Gardener, a shop in Chicago that caters to gar deners working with com

pact spaces. "People are real ly looking for things that are an extension of themselves," he adds.

Flavor at Stake For Robert Kaufman, a

partner with Proskauer Rose Goetz & Mendelsohn in New York City, gardening fulfilled a much more basic need: He wanted better tasting fruits and vegetables than those he found in the grocery stores near his weekend home in Wilmington, Vt.

What started with a few simple herb, tomato and cu cumber plants has grown into a 1,600-square-foot ex otic fruit and vegetable gar

den that includes more than 78 varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, cu cumbers, peppers and zucchini.

"I absolutely never imagined myself to be a gardener like this," says Kaufman, a corporate lawyer who was raised in Manhattan. "If I had known more than I did, I might have been frightened about doing this. But I just put the plants and seeds out, and fed them more than any commercial farmer would. They just grew."

The idea for Kaufman's garden

94 ABA JOURNAL / MAY 1997 PHOTO REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION, COUNTRY GARDENS ?1994. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PHOTO BY DENCY KANE

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took root when he began collecting seed catalogs. "I wanted to grow things that other people don't. It was fun to find things that were dif ferent," he says.

Kaufman's first odd try was

purple potatoes. He won first prize for them in a local fair and then began escalating his search for ex otic versions of every vegetable.

He now grows carrots in bril liant yellows, whites and purples. Potatoes range from purple with lilac spots and white flesh to candy striped. Kaufman's tomatoes are

more likely to be yellow, orange and even zebra-striped in two shades of green than red.

Kaufman spends most of his spring sorting through seed catalogs and examining the detailed records he keeps of the previous season's harvest. Planting actually begins after the ground thaws in May, and it takes three consecutive weekends to complete. He then spends sever al hours each weekend tending the garden, then cooking, canning and jellying his near-weekly harvest.

"Gardening is such a change from my office work," says Kauf man, who is a former president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. "Relaxation is not lying around and doing nothing but doing something else. I may come out of my garden tired, but I go back to work refreshed."

While the fruits of the legal

Turning Over a New Leaf

Afraid to get your hands dirty? Maybe you prefer to just look. Bookstore shelves are full of gardening books, offering everything from photos of spectacular landscapes to step-by-step instructions on using lattices in gardens. Following are some recommendations.

From Barbara Paul Robinson, a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton in Manhattan and gardener in Connecticut:

Other People's Gardens by Christopher Lloyd Secret Gardens by Rosemary Verey Creating Gardens in the English Style by Penelope Hobhouse Penelope Hobhouse's Garden Designs by Penelope Hobhouse Onward and Upward in the Garden by Katharine S. White

For gardening in small spaces, check out the following books, all recommended by Phil Eichler of The Urban Gardener in Chicago:

The Lattice Gardener by William C. Mulligan Climbing Vines by Mimi Luebbermann Little Herb Gardens by Georgeanne Brennan and Mimi Luebbermann Easy Orchids by Mimi Luebbermann Salad Gardens by Mimi Luebbermann

profession can be elusive, Barbara Paul Robinson finds the tangibility of her gardens magnetic.

She revels in the memory of a 1991 1^-month sabbatical in Eng land shoveling dirt, pulling weeds and propagating flowers in the gar dens of famed British gardeners Rosemary Verey and Penelope Hob house.

Rose-Colored Glasses "I love it," Robinson says. "It is

totally therapeutic. Plants do not talk. They do not argue with you. They do not change their minds.

"If you plant a rose it is a rose. It might die, but it does not turn into a tomato," says Robinson, a

partner with Debevoise & Plimpton in Manhattan who was the first

woman president of the city bar as sociation.

Like Eiseman, Robinson never

planned to get involved in garden ing. In 1971 she purchased a week end home in the town of Washing ton in northwest Connecticut. The property was in desperate need of repair. "The grounds were fields that had reverted to woods and scrub," she recalls. "I thought I would clean it up and be done with it. It just slowly sucked me in."

Robinson's 40-acre property boasts herbaceous borders and

perennial borders mixed with ten der plants, terraces, fountains, a rose garden and an antique green house, which she and her husband moved from his mother's house in Pennsylvania. This year she plans to complete a woodland walk through a portion of her property, complete with rhododendron and helleborus plants.

"Gardens are never finished. They are always changing," she says. "You [have to] keep adding new things. That is part of the fun" and the intimidation of gar dening.

Though Robinson had the ben efit of learning from gardeners in

charge of some of England's nation al trust gardens, she believes any one can learn to garden.

"There are all sorts of books that tell you how to create the per fect garden. It can be daunting," she says. "Lawyers don't like to

make mistakes."

But that's no reason to hold back. "Just do it," she advises. "You can read about gardening, but you learn so much just by doing it. Just put your hands into the soil."

BARBARA PAUL ROBINSON AND CHARLES RASKOB ROBINSON ABA JOURNAL / MAY 1997 95

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