Stan Hywet Hall and Garden Magazine - Spring/Summer 2008 - (Page 6)

Last Child in the Woods is a profound book that provides a connection between technology and the absence of nature in the lives of children today. Louv offers solutions on how to heal the broken bond. This informative book is a wonderful guide that will educate and simplify going green. It’s Easy Being Green offers simple advice on how to get started, from adopting greener buying habits, finding Earth-friendly products, shopping for green products online and more. An amazing guide to some of the most stunning and impressive gardens around the world, 1001 Gardens You Must See Before You Die features Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. This book is a must-have for anyone that loves gardening or gardens. T Go Green is a fantastic resource on how you can make a demonstrable difference today by creating a smaller carbon footprint. It also offers user-friendly information about green schooling, buying local and organic products, conserving water, and initiating green programming in your community. Go GReen By: nancy h. taylor Price: $12.95 f e at u r e : t h e g r e at g a r d e n a dv e n t u r e T Last ChiLd in the Woods By: Richard Louv Price: $13.95 it’s easY BeinG GReen By: Crissy trask Price: $12.95 1001 GaRdens You Must see BefoRe You die Price: $34.95 aking its cue from the premise of Louv’s book, “Great Garden Adventure” is an interactive exploration of the Estate’s grounds, and is designed to actively engage and spark the curiosity of children. Kid-friendly “imagination stations” are scattered along the two-mile path that comprises “Great Garden Adventure;” these stops serve as guides to learning about the environment and special landscape features of Stan Hywet. The intent is that the stops will also serve as springboards to additional “nature play.” “We’re a big property — 70 acres — so there are a lot of things to explore here,” says Donna Spiegler, Communications Manager. “A lot of it is landscaped. But there is a lot of property on the perimeter that is rarely visited, rarely used. We’re taking advantage of that.” To access those areas, horticultural staffers have built new pathways, all made of wood chips from prunings, to link kidfriendly “imagination stations” that guide exploration and encourage unstructured play. Some make use of basic elements, such as a large fallen tree that visitors can walk on and determine its age by counting the rings on its trunk, a lagoon to illustrate the diversity of pond life and a wooded area to demonstrate forest pollination. Other areas include a natural amphitheater, which Director of Horticulture Tom Hrivnak describes as a “bowl” formed by two small knolls, a grassy dell surrounded by trees where one of the Seiberling daughters got married, as well as the sandstone quarry, a key landmark on the estate. “Stan Hywet is Old English for ‘stone quarry,’ which is the estate’s most prominent natural feature,” she notes. Among the more intriguing manmade features is a scattering of “cement trunks” in a small forested area south of the English Garden. “In the 1920s and 1930s, people used to fill in trees that were decaying — it was a way to stabilize them,” Spiegler explains. “But eventually the trees fell apart and died, leaving a kind of fossil of the trees once growing there.” Also on the estate are concrete obelisks, actual surveying monuments used during construction of the Manor House, and a 200-footlong drainage tunnel for the subbasement of the Manor House that runs underneath the English Garden from the gymnasium (now used as an auditorium) to a nearby hillside. A steel grate has replaced the locked door, which allows visitors to walk the five or six feet into the tunnel and hear the echo inside it. stan hywet hall & gardens magazine

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Stan Hywet Hall and Garden Magazine - Spring/Summer 2008

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