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Newton resident Bonnie Ulin started her landscape-design business in
1972. Now, her Wellesley company specializes in residential design
and unusual growing techniques. (Susan Chaityn Lebovits for The Boston Globe)
At home with plants
By Susan Chaityn Lebovits | October 14, 2007
Thirty years ago Bonnie Ulin contacted a few landscape architects about the overgrown hemlocks that had reached the second floor of her home.
Each of them took a look and told her: "This is a very interesting problem. I'll get back to you."
Her phone never rang, so she decided she'd have to find a solution herself.
Ulin enrolled in Radcliffe College's Landscape and Environmental Design program (now the Landscape Institute of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University), and in 1972 she opened Bonnie Ulin Inc., Designers and Builders of Fine Residential Landscapes, in Wellesley. She has since dealt with countless overgrown hemlocks, invasive ivy, and water-hungry Norway maples in communities across Boston's western suburbs.
Not only is Ulin a walking search-engine for plant identification, but also for unusual techniques such as espalier - the process of training a tree or shrub through pruning to have its branches grow in a flat pattern. The method was originally developed in the Middle Ages to harvest fruit inside castle courtyards and eventually became an art form. Today it's often used on walls or trellises.
Gallery: Bonnie Ulin's 'do-it-yourself' landscape |
On average, Ulin and her two associates, Jennifer Nawada of West Roxbury, and Tom Strangfeld of Newtonville, take on 12 to 15 projects a year.
"We always go inside a home when we do an initial consultation to get a feeling of the colors and the way it's decorated," said Ulin. "It tells us a lot about how people use space." Some, for example, are very neat, she said, and prefer designs that are squared off.
Ulin is also informed about construction materials for decks, patios, terraces, stone walls, walkways and driveways.
One of her favorite jobs, she said, involved a "dry" waterfall that began approximately 100 feet above the road and gave the illusion of a river running down a steep hill, ending in a faux pool at the bottom. The water was created with river stone and defined by boulders along the way.
Of course not every project goes according to plan. Last year, in the early winter, a homeowner asked Ulin to design a swimming pool that would complement a previous job. Ulin and her team had the entire area designed, then received a phone call from the client, who said, "We've just been admitted to the country club, so we won't be needing the swimming pool.' "
She now works with a number of hand-picked subcontractors, but it wasn't always that way. She recalls the early days of her business, when she did all the work, including the manual labor, herself, with some help from her husband, Peter.
Halfway through Ulin's five-year program at Radcliffe, an acquaintance called and said, "I know that you're still a student, but what you lack in knowledge you'll make up with enthusiasm - will you do a perennial garden for us?"
Ulin said she accepted the challenge and told the woman she'd be over in 20 minutes. (First she researched perennial gardens, because they hadn't covered that in class.)
She knew she would need stones to hold the grade and to make the area more interesting, so she and her husband drove to Chestnut Hill to hunt for Roxbury puddingstone.
"As my husband lifted the large boulders into the car, he turned to me and said, 'Get yourself another hunky - I'm not going to do this kind of work for you,' " said Ulin. "And that's how my business started."
Rod Perry was the first to open a commercial purchasing account with Ulin in the late 1970s, when "there really weren't too many lady landscape designers around," he said.
Perry recalled Ulin insisting on choosing the plant materials herself, from rhododendron shrubs to weeping cherry trees, "according to the type of house, the coloration, and the function." Perry spent 32 years at Weston Nurseries, and is now at Cavicchos Greenhouses in Sudbury, where he still works with Ulin and her staff.
John Furlong, director of the Landscape Institute since 1982, was one of Ulin's professors at Radcliffe.
"Bonnie was one of those people who was always interjecting reality into how to get things done - like how to deal with people, and questioning the budget," said Furlong. "She was a wonderful bulldog that would stick in and challenge us - in a good way."
Ulin was raised in Louisville, Ky., the daughter of a lawyer and a homemaker who spent hours tending her garden.
During World War II, Ulin and her older sister had their own Victory Garden that they called "Vegetable Soup." They also spent a lot of time playing on the stone walls that surrounded it. Ulin came to Boston in 1955 to attend Wellesley College, where she majored in history. She married Peter, who is seven years older, while in her junior year.
Their Newton home reflects a classic taste with a contemporary twist. Formal portraits from the 1800s are scattered throughout the foyer and the living room, along with an Italian fishbowl and an antique eel fork mounted on a wooden base that serves as a sculpture. Another room has an antique letter "O" hanging on the wall, a remnant from the old Woolworth department stores.
The dining room boasts a collection of majolica pottery. The style became popular in the late 1800s, a reflection of the Victorian interest in natural sciences including botany, zoology, and entomology. Pieces were created in high relief, and featured insects, flowers and leaves, fruit, shells, and fish. Ulin's collection fills a cupboard. Pitchers and platters, naturally, are patterns of plants and leaves.
But pottery is not the only way to be among plants as the cold weather moves in.
Winter flower boxes and container planters can be filled with plants such as broad leaf and needled evergreen sprigs and cones, she said. Other materials that present well in flower boxes, she said, include balsam firs, holly, evergreen azaleas, andromeda, and juniper. Miniature evergreens can also be planted in containers and strategically positioned within the landscape.
"I love translating a person out into the land," said Ulin. "Their style, their personality, and extending the home into the landscape."
To suggest a subject for the People column, e-mail Lebovits@globe.com
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/10/14/at_home_with_plants/