Building The Garden
On any weekend, when the snow is off the ground, you’re likely to find Terry McDonnell toiling in his garden along the Connecticut River in Windsor, Vermont. But after years of work, his plot hasn’t produced a single vegetable nor a bouquet of flowers. That’s all right with McDonnell because he is cultivating a very different kind of garden experience. And although he believes he has at least 10 years of work ahead, he’s ready to share it now.
Inspired by Ireland’s 100-year-old The Life of Man - one of Europe’s most famous Japanese gardens - The Path of Life Garden symbolizes the experience of life. When McDonnell, a child and family therapist, visited The Life of Man he knew he had found the use for the riverside field he owned in Windsor. “Nothing is more interesting to me than our lives, with all their twists and turns.” says McDonnell, “I wanted to build a garden to represent our journey through life.”
The path that winds around the 14-acre field, connects 18 installations called “rooms,” each symbolizing an aspect of life -- e.g., birth, union, family, community, ambition, sorrow, contemplation and death. Some features are readily understood, while others require thought. The materials for all the features are natural – stone and wood mostly, but they exhibit differing degrees of manipulation by the hand of man. In a way, the garden is also a personal collection and collecting the objects that delineate the rooms has put McDonnell in touch with interesting people.
McDonnell bought the land in 1993 as he worked on creating a “See it Made” industrial park featuring Harpoon Brewery and Simon Pearce factories that are open for tours. Before moving to California in 1997, he planted a stand of oaks along the railroad tracks that separate the garden site from the industrial park. He also created the amphitheater.
Moving back from California in 2001, he rented a large trailer and picked up 800 hemlocks in Pennsylvania and created a maze with a posthole digger and the help of a friend. By 2005 it had finally grown in enough to give a visitor the sense of working through a maze. Each year since, McDonnell has added features. There was “Hope” with its mound and tori gates in 2003 and the Tunnel of Oblivion in 2002.
This year he will be busy planting the Tree of Wisdom, erecting the bamboo circle representing “Forgiveness,” adding a ring of tall “sugar stones” to “Birth” and planting some Vermont wild flowers to add color to the field.
McDonnell works on the garden every weekend in the spring and summer – as much as his wife will let him he says. Aside from constructing rooms, he mows the paths that connect them once a week and the entire meadow three times each summer.
A bit of a perfectionist, McDonnell says he has done everything at least three times to get it right. And because of the garden’s location, it has not been a simple project. An active railroad track along the west side of the property made it necessary to built a tunnel for access to the site. So, everything – from visitors, to artworks to construction equipment – must be able to fit through the tunnel. McDonnell smiles to think of the contractor whose equipment sometimes has just an inch or so of clearance.
While Japanese gardens are known for their meticulous control of the natural world, that is not McDonnell’s style. Path of Life is in a flood plain and part of it is under water each spring. This means that some installations – especially the 20 foot tall driftwood sculpture called “The Band” must be taken down in the winter and spring. But this is a small price to pay to be next to the river’s rich ecosystem providing glimpses of many animals and birds including a bald eagle that lives in the area. McDonnell hopes the arboretum he is planting to make a pleasant walk along the river’s edge will bolster this biodiversity.
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Path Of Life Garden - Route 5 North, In Windsor VT, The Birthplace of Vermont - Open Year Round - Tel: 802-345-5616
Path Of Life Garden
