Buffalo-Style Gardens: Create a Quirky, One-of-a-Kind Private Garden with Eye-Catching Designs

by Sally Cunningham, Jim Charlier

Overview

Buffalo-Style Gardens is a one-of-a-kind, offbeat garden design book that showcases the wildly inventive gardens and gardeners of Buffalo – and offers readers "the best of the best” ideas to use in their own small-space gardens.

Who knew? Buffalo, New York, is the new Ground Zero for free-spirited garden innovation? Learn from the stories of everyday, non-professional gardeners who have unintentionally transformed Buffalo’s urban neighborhoods into a 21st century garden design laboratory.

It’s all about seeing your space with new eyes and not letting existing limitations on the ground stop you from being out-of-the-box creative. Each July, over 400 private gardens open to the public to show off their fresh, often quirky, take on outdoor living. There’s nothing quite like “Garden Walk Buffalo,” the largest garden tour in North America.

With hundreds of design, planting and DIY tips, authors and show-garden experts Sally Cunningham and Jim Charlier reveal how fences and furnishings, trees and shrubs, art and whimsy – and the element of surprise – work together to change an ordinary space into something uniquely yours: your own unforgettable Buffalo-style garden.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781943366361
Publisher:	St. Lynn's Press
Publication date:	02/22/2019
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Sally Cunningham is a horticulture professional, garden consultant, and head of the Great Garden Travel division of AAA of Western and Central New York. She conducts tours in the U.S., Canada and Europe, and speaks nationally on horticultural topics. She writes a weekly garden column for The Buffalo News and a monthly column for Buffalo Spree magazine. Cunningham and co-author Jim Charlier are leading figures in Buffalo’s “urban garden renaissance” and the much-lauded Garden Walk Buffalo, the largest private garden tour in America, averaging 65,000-plus visitors each year.

Jim Charlier is an award-winning marketing and design professional. An avid gardener, garden photographer, and garden tourism advocate, he consults with gardening organizations across the U.S. He is co-founder and vice president of Gardens Buffalo Niagara, coordinating 20 community garden tours and 75 regional Open Gardens – including the centerpiece event, Garden Walk Buffalo. In total, these garden events attract upwards of 100,000 visitors each summer. His own highly original Buffalo garden has appeared in many books, magazines, tours and on television.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Buffalo Style: a New Kind of Garden…livable, relatable, original, free spirited
PART ONE: Secrets of one-of-a-kind, unforgettable gardens, Buffalo-style!
Chapter 1: Other People’s Gardens: what you can learn from a garden walk
Chapter 2: Great Little Gardens and How They Grew
Chapter 3: Good Garden Design (in the beginning…)
PART TWO: You and Your Site
Chapter 4: What Do You Want Your Garden To Be?
Chapter 5: What Does Your Garden Want To Be? (your site’s challenges and opportunities)
PART THREE: The Bones of Your Unforgettable Garden (design features that make all the difference)
Chapter 6: Set the Stage (Frame it!): walls, hedges, fences and more
Chapter 7: The Big Bones: immovable objects
Chapter 8: Find Your Path: lines, contours, walkways
PART FOUR: Let’s Decorate! (making it personal)
Chapter 9: Furniture and Hardscape Define Your Style
Chapter 10: Art, Collections & Themes
Chapter 11: And Now We Choose Plants!
PART FIVE: Gardening for the Greater Good: from the neighborhood to the world
Chapter 12: Gardening is Transformative…and Contagious
Appendix Destination public gardens; U.S. private garden tour listings; Recommended reading
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“In Buffalo-Style Gardens, Sally Cunningham and Jim Charlier describe a gardening creativity that is like no other: lush, urban, funky, welcoming, and – always – unexpected." – Elizabeth Licata, editor, Buffalo Spree magazine; contributing writer, GardenRant.com

"Buffalo-Style Gardens is a joyful tour through the offbeat, artistic, handmade sensibility that has put this hip, hardscrabble, urban community on the horticulture map." – Amy Stewart, author of The Drunken Botanist and The Kopp Sisters novels; co-founder, GardenRant.com

“All garden lovers should have a trip to Garden Walk Buffalo on their bucket list. But whether you get there or not, Buffalo-Style Gardens belongs on your bookshelf or table.” – C.L. Fornari, author of The Cocktail Hour Garden; gardenlady.com

“Buffalo-Style Gardens will inspire the gardener in you, to be sure, but it will also inspire your admiration for individuals and a community that have created North America’s premier garden event.” - Harry Jongerden, Executive Director, Toronto Botanical Garden

“Who would have thought Buffalo would be the epicenter of a new wave of American gardening? In this idea-inducing new book you’re sure to find plenty to ‘borrow’ in your own gardens.” - George Weigel, garden book author, columnist, designer

“Buffalo-style gardens are unique in the gardening world and this book captures them. Read, smile, absorb and make these ideas your own.” - Kathy and Mike Shadrack, authors of The Book of Little Hostas

Preface

(From the INTRODUCTION)

A New Kind of Garden: livable, relatable, original, free-spirited

The first inspirations for this book were some very special residential gardens in Buffalo, New York, home of the largest garden tour in North America: Garden Walk Buffalo. How did it grow to be such a large and talked-about event? It didn’t happen overnight. It took twenty-some years to get that good, that original. During those years a new kind of garden was evolving, with a particular set of characteristics. They were all lush and traditional enough to be called fine gardens but also quirky enough to spark a new term: a Buffalo-style garden.

No matter the size or style, each one had its own kind of welcoming energy and a unique personality that spoke volumes about its creators. No cookie cutter landscapes here. Every garden was built and tended by the gardeners themselves. These are approachable, relatable, livable environments that bring a smile and warm the heart.

We (Sally and Jim) are keenly aware that unforgettable gardens occur in other places too. Both of us are gardeners ourselves, and observers of the garden tourism phenomenon far and wide – in Europe as well as North America. We have often talked about the common denominators: What makes some gardens unforgettable? Could we bottle it and sell it, or explain it to others?

We knew we could, and the best way to start was with those extraordinary, (mostly) small, astonishingly creative gardens of Buffalo.

Finding Your Inner Buffalo

You’re about to meet some highly individual gardens and the gardeners who created them. Different approaches, different sensibilities, no two remotely alike. You might ask, if these gardens are all so unique, how can there be a Buffalo style?

Well, that’s just the point: These homeowners weren’t designing “by the book.” They weren’t professionals – some had never gardened before. But the common design thread connecting the hundreds of gardens of Garden Walk Buffalo is the individual artistic sense of the gardeners, their way of personalizing an outdoor space, their love of the objects and plants they bring to it. And their deep respect for the environment.

For this book we’ll show you how they achieved their memorable gardens – not always intentional, often hit and miss and try again. These gardeners seem to intuitively understand certain design and artistic rules. They played with their space, with colors and shapes; they found creative ways to overcome challenges, like a neighbor’s ugly garage wall or a large tree in the "wrong place." Most of all, they loved making something just their own that gave them joy. And they demonstrated for the thousands of visitors to their gardens how heart, persistence and go-for-it experimentation can make a garden fabulous even when it’s not exactly "by the book."

Now let’s look in on some of these Buffalo-style gardens and see how their owners did it. In these pages you’ll find lots of inspiration, design and horticulture tips, and practical how-to’s for tapping into your inner Buffalo. May it roam free as you create your own uniquely wonderful garden!

Sally and Jim

P.S.: If you haven’t noticed by now, this is not going to be just another garden design book.

Editorial Reviews

The best way to learn to garden and how to design your garden is to visit other gardens. Luckily, we have a couple recent developments in the US that duplicate the success of the UK's Open Garden Days and their National Garden Scheme. One is the Garden Conservancy Open Days, and the other is the multitude of local garden walks. Ann Arbor's garden walk is slightly older than Buffalo, New York's. Buffalo's is definitely bigger—over a 1,000 gardens in their metro area in New York and Canada. That's probably why the authors lay claim to this gardening trend, one that makes paint, whimsy, and found objects almost as important as the plants. This book just makes me smile: the generous illustrations make it the next best thing to being in Buffalo at THEIR best time of the year.

Buffalo-Style Gardens - Carla Bayha

If you have ever attended the hugely successful Garden Walk Buffalo — it welcomes 70,000 garden enthusiasts to 400 private gardens over a two-day summer weekend — you might think "Buffalo-style Gardens," by Sally Cunningham and Jim Charlier is just a book featuring these innovative gardens, and that would be enough. But this book is so much more.

What is a Buffalo-style garden? "Buffalo-style gardens offer different approaches, different sensibilities, no two are remotely alike," according to the authors. "The common thread connecting hundreds of gardens is the individual artistic sense of the gardener, their way of personalizing their outdoor space, their love of the objects and plants they bring to it."

I have attended Garden Walk Buffalo on several occasions. While strolling through the gardens is a great way to pick up design ideas, it may not give you the skills and confidence to tackle a major reworking of your own garden. This is where the beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully written "Buffalo-style Gardens" really shines.

Cunningham is a gifted writer, her conversational style is very approachable, and Charlier pipes in with practical tidbits of information and how-to ideas that help to demystify the design process. Their style reminds me of a pair of friends sitting down with you at the table to help you formulate a workable garden plan.

Having visited many of the gardens in "Buffalo-style Gardens" myself, turning a page was like revisiting an old friend. With the authors’ running commentary, we are encouraged to look beyond the surface of a pretty garden and see why these ideas work.

If you are considering updating your garden, or just want to see why these gardens are so popular, "Buffalo-style Gardens" offers plenty of practical, usable advice. Simply put, Buffalo-style gardens are unique, well executed, fun and most of all, well-loved.

How to create your own Buffalo-style garden - Theresa Forte

WOW… It’s hard to write about a book when the introductory chapter exclaims it is “A New Kind of Garden: livable, relatable, original, free spirited.”

Have you heard about Buffalo-Style Gardens? That is the title of a book published in 2019 by St. Lynn’s Press and authored by Sally Cunningham and Jim Charlier. As an aside, Buffalo, New York, will celebrate its silver anniversary of garden walks. Buffalo and environs are home to some of the largest number of residential gardens on private tour in North America. To be sure, these are very different types of landscapes than those portrayed in most other landscape texts. Something wonderful must be happening in Buffalo because more people tour these gardens than the combined attendance of two Disney parks.

If you are a big fan of color in the garden then consider the sub-title of Buffalo-Style Gardens that teases what is between the covers: “Create a Quirky, One-of-a-Kind Private Garden with Eye-Catching Designs.” This is a book where one can see how riots of color and whimsy are personified. The book goes beyond the usual use of colorful flowers and shrubs as it includes the total integration of other plant material with hardscape (e.g., walkway), furniture (perhaps repurposed) and more. In this regard, psychologists use the word gestalt. Funk & Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of the English Language defines gestalt as an arrangement of separate elements of experience, emotion, etc., in a form, pattern or configuration so integrated as to appear and function as a unit that is more than a simple summation of its parts.

That nails the essence of a Buffalo-style garden. The authors refer to this as “a garden design laboratory for our 21st century sensibilities and lifestyle.”

… Words and colorful photos do justice to the understanding of what these type gardens are all about. You too can emulate your inner being. Color up those drab Adirondack chairs, use sculpture, go to the thrift store and look for an out of the ordinary bench to color. If you are a collector of (you name it), show it off. These are all personal statements, so make this a YOU garden or, as the book says, go bold or go home. … Surely it is not a Japanese-like garden, English garden, rose garden, pollinator garden or any other kind of specialty garden. Now you have created a one-of-a-kind Buffalo-style garden. Good for you, or as noted at the opening: WOW!

George Graine

https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/01/gardens-get-buffaloed.html?fbclid=IwAR06U5lLNvFg3vZbye5j9za_QLRnNU9ljzDZHCtdz1kD-N9470qqDkc6698

"Gardens Get Buffaloed" - Elizabeth Licata