ENCHANTED GARDEN
DELLWOOD GARDEN FEATURES AN ECLECTIC ARRAY OF EXOTIC TREES AND THE AMBIENCE OF A BYGONE AGE.

St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN)
July 30, 2005
Author: MARGE HOLS

Back in the Roaring Twenties, Oscar and Sandra Kalman built an enchanting turreted pool house and pool within a walled garden on their extensive property near White Bear Lake in Dellwood. The Kalmans were close friends of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

To design the project, the Kalmans brought in a noted New York architect, Frank J. Forster, in 1926. Forster situated the French-style limestone pool house and 85-foot swimming pool down a hillside to the east of the Kalmans' English Tudor summer home. He enclosed both structures in a garden with massive nine-foot limestone and fieldstone walls.

"Mrs. Kalman was said to be a very persnickety lady," says John Larkin, current owner of the property. "She came back from vacation while they were building the walls. There was a huge boulder that must weigh a couple of tons on the bottom, but she didn't want it there; she wanted it up above the wall. So they had to take down the wall right there and put that boulder up higher. It's still there."

Larkin, who grew up on St. Paul's East Side, bought the property when it was divided from the main house in 1966 by Bill and Dorothy Fobes. He had just completed his residency in orthopedic surgery at Massachusetts General and Children's Hospital in Boston and returned here to practice medicine.

After making the pool house livable by installing windows and a heating system, Larkin turned his attention to the garden.

"The place had little diversity as to trees," he recalls. "There were huge white oaks everywhere, including five that obscured a stand of marvelous white pines. I kind of pussyfooted around for a few years, making small changes, and then in 1969, I cut down 41 white oaks. Then, I was able to plant a variety of smaller, interesting trees."

Among more than 125 unusual trees he has planted are an impressive collection of Japanese maples, regular and weeping katsuratrees, hemlocks, spruces, a Chinese white fringetree and a Korean fir with needles that curl to reveal a bright silver underside. There's even a dawn redwood, a cousin of the sequoia that was once thought extinct.

For gardeners who covet Japanese red maples (that would be me), Larkin recommends Acer palmatum 'Trompenburg,' a Dutch selection. His tree is thriving after nine years in an unprotected part of the garden.

Larkin says his interest in trees began as a teenager when he worked at Bailey Nurseries in Newport. Later, while studying in Boston, he was inspired by collections of exotic trees at the Arnold Arboretum and Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass.

"We've put in a lot of oddball trees," he says, "many of which have turned out to be annuals because we've gotten varieties that don't belong here. I've purchased mature trees that died the next winter. We've tried Irish yews and various other yews, too, but they all died. Now, we have an English yew right outside the house that's Zone 6 (hardy to 10 below zero) that has survived four winters.

"It used to look ridiculous around here in the wintertime," he adds. "We had big shields, bamboo curtains up to 12 feet high, that we put around the Chamaecyparis (false cypress) to protect them. The most beautiful ones, Chamaecyparis obtusa (Hinoki false cypress), never lived over a year, anyway. Since then, I've thought, if they die, they die, so we just leave everything alone. Now we grow mostly Chamaecyparis pisifera (Japanese false cypress), which is hardier, although we still have some immature C. obtusa. Perhaps they've survived because they're small."

"John's looking at the big picture, making the garden more interesting by having a large variety of trees," says his wife, Colles Larkin, who's also an avid gardener. "John's love of plants, like his love of art, revolves around visual interest. To him, what tickles the eye determines the selection."

Colles' interest runs more to perennials and vegetables, she says. While growing up in the Virginia countryside outside Washington, D.C., she didn't enjoy weeding the family's large vegetable garden. Now, Colles says, nothing gives her more satisfaction than weeding, growing plants and "having conversations with the cardinals" while tending her large, ornamental kitchen garden.

Both Larkins take a keen interest in perennials, which they've combined with shrubs and small trees in garden beds throughout the property. Long perennial borders flank the entry walk, which extends from a parking area to a gated archway into the walled garden. Inside, curving borders along the walls contain a rich mix of perennials and woody plants -- Japanese red maple, dwarf hemlock, hydrangea, rhododendron and weigela.

"The Kalmans had extensive gardens," John Larkin says, "including a rose garden, a large vegetable garden and perennial gardens. They had a lot of wild flowers and a huge number of hosta, which they called by its old name, Funkia. I still have some of them."

Stone stairways ascend from the walled garden to a woodland garden with pathways that meander around still more beds of perennials and exotic trees. A sunken, circular gathering place, another Kalman legacy, is centered by an 1880s fountain the Larkins purchased at a Sotheby's garden auction in London. Another path leads to a brick-paved overlook that provides a place to sit and enjoy an elevated view of the house and pool. Nearby, as a hint that this might truly be Eden, an Alonzo Hauser sculpture of Eve reclines under a redbud.

The St. Paul Garden Club is nominating the Larkin garden for inclusion in the Garden Club of America Collection at the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Gardens in Washington, D.C. Only a few Minnesota gardens are in the archives, including the Garth Garden at House of Hope Presbyterian Church on Summit Avenue in St. Paul.