Photography by Marie Viljoen.
Buffalo is a city with a reputation for cold. And while winter seems long, the growing season’s northern days are longer.
In a narrow strip between pavers and fence beside her driveway on West Delavan Avenue, Jennifer Guercio grows irrepressible Clematis jackmannii, goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus), and a meadow rue (a Thalictrum species) which “withstand harsh weather and many feet of snow,” right beside the driveway.
Driveway Gardens
Fence Flowers
Jennifer Guercio’s garden does not stop at the fence but spills over abundantly, inviting the garden visit to begin before the gate has been opened.
Like many Buffalo gardeners, Jennifer takes the garden to the hell strip, the compromised sliver of earth between sidewalk and street.
Hell Strip Gardens
It is a rare Buffalo garden that is without art, ornament, or statuary of some kind. Beside intricately painted Victorian homes, eccentric combinations and found objects have come to define Buffalo style.
Frosty Ornaments
Wall Gardens
Jim Charlier, a moving force behind the garden walk since the early days (“Jim is Garden Walk Buffalo,” says Mike Shadrack, a former British bobby, current Buffalonian and author of The Color Encyclopedia of Hostas) reckons that Buffalonians will hang anything on a wall.
In a substantial wooden picture frame he has planted a collection of sedums and Sempervivum in moss.
Start with One Plant
Visitors to the Bird Avenue garden of Brian Olinski (at Left) and his husband, Gordon Ballard, often leave with a castor bean plant, or with the cannas and datura flourishing in pots in the car-less driveway.
In reaction to winter and despite a shorter growing season than most other parts of the country, Buffalonians embrace plants with big, colorful leaves and tropical aspirations.
Tropical Plants
The toasty glass houses of the Buffalo Botanic Garden offer a tropical getaway during short days and long nights. The flowers of an exotic Indian clock vine (Thunbergia mysorensis) drop deliciously from an overhead trellis.
Indoor Vines
Elegant Clematis
In bloom all over the city, the elegantly dainty, tulip-shaped flowers of Clematis texensis ‘Princess Diana’ prove that Clematis do not have to be loud and large.
Garden Walk Buffalo is famous for mingling neighbors and strangers, and in Jennifer Guercio’s garden this is reflected in some of the unexpected plant pairings.
Strange Neighbors
Save Seedheads
Don’t deadhead the alliums when they are past bloom.
The whorled seedheads of Clematis ‘Liberation’ are like silky toupees from the ’70s.
The seedpods of opium poppies (Papaver somniferum) add months of drama to Gordon and Brian’s garden, long after the blowsy flowers have dropped their petals.
Blue sea holly (Eryngium planum)’s raison d’être is the spiny skeleton of bracts that remain for months after the tiny petals have fallen away.