When John and I decamped from Brooklyn, New York to North Carolina with the pup posse in tow, we focused our sights upon the top-to-bottom renovations of the House of Bedlam. That year-long overhaul saw us living in a cramped guest bedroom with a hot pad and microwave and waking up every morning to the dulcet sound of hack saws and AC/DC (our electrician’s early-morning music of choice).
But you have already read the ins and outs of the Bedlam renovation in these Substack pages…
And so the design storyline moved forward…
Renovation wrapped up, there was something missing. The House of Bedlam exterior.
John and I are both passionate gardeners but had yet to tackle the home’s overgrown gardens—especially what we called the Great Woodlands across the stream (which we rebranded as the Sacred Stream to give it some pizzazz).
There were various pernicious chinaberry vines that had taken over like kudzu with leathery, yards-long roots running amok.
Wizened stumps.
Scraggly trees that had been let to grow hither and yon.
John and I sought out professional quotes to tackle the project but unless we had a spare $40k floating around, hiring a professional landscaper was out of the question.
And then the pandemic hit.
The social calendar cranked to a halt. As did our extensive travel schedule. Our weekends were now free. Very free.
“Let’s buy a chainsaw,” I said to John, envisioning six weekends—at most!—worth of work in the Great Woodlands and lots of margaritas under the remaining bosky brilliance come summer.
With a Stihl chainsaw in hand and a trucker hat upon my head, I began the Excellent Outdoor Adventure. One. Two. Twelve. Twenty six trees. Scraggly trees that were half dead or cattywampus. We wanted to celebrate the trees that should be there—the sycamores, beech, and oaks—and remove those that shouldn’t. John helped in a big way, but I became the chainsaw guru while he mastered the skill of heavy-duty raking.
Soon, the Great Woodland began divulging its undulating underpinnings—and its potential. Plus, the occasional baby copperhead.
Chinaberry was yanked and pulled and then yanked and pulled and cursed at some more.
More trees came down.
Piles formed, and towering stacks of logs and debris departed in large trucks. I stocked up on curious oil-gas mixtures and sharpened blades in my spare time, and John and I perused endless books on garden luminaries such as Capability Brown, Rosemary Verey, Gertrude Jekyll, and Vita Sackville-West.
A bulletin board in the House of Bedlam basement became the nerve center for images of gardens and follies that inspired us. Trellis here. Boxwoods there. Gravel. Reflecting ponds. An Indian tents with colorful pennants flying in the breeze. A meadow. We sketched paths and discussed clean fill and irrigation over glasses of wine.
And the trees kept coming down. We raked. We bought another chainsaw. John yanked and pulled at those irksome vines and their endless roots sent from the deepest fathoms of hell. We raked some more.
Six weeks, twelve weeks, 36 weeks, then 80 weeks passed by. Our four pound-rescue pups looked at us with baleful eyes seeming to question whether their promised scamper-cum-croquet lawn would ever materialize.
And now more than two years have passed. It’s night and day in the Great Woodlands but there’s still so much more to do.
John and I have completed everything we can—it’s time to bring in some heavy equipment and further manpower—for stump removal and grading. There’s a pesky tree root ball that still needs to be wenched out. And some giant rocks must be moved.
And then John and I can get to planting. The vision is all there, mapped out on the bulletin board.
Think a rampant wildflower meadow spilling down to the now deliciously visible Sacred Stream with a Chinoiserie-inspired fretwork bridge spanning the banks and an Indian-style tent for cocktails al fresco.
Soon. Soon.
When you have more style than money, your dreams take a tad longer to become reality. But that makes the journey all that more worth it.
