By Kate Hill
Staff Writer
Last June, the Garden Club of America honored local Master Gardener Janine Golub with the “Club Historic Preservation Commendation.”
The award recognizes Golub for dedicating nearly four decades to the restoration, preservation and maintenance of the formal Ellen Biddle Shipman-designed flower gardens at Lorenzo State Historic Site.
Golub and her husband, Jimmy — a current Cazenovia Town Board member — are the owners and operators of Our Farm on Peth Road in Manlius.
The family farm, which has been an agritourism destination for decades, more recently evolved into a popular wedding venue.
Golub has a degree in ornamental horticulture/floriculture from SUNY Cobleskill.
Before moving to Cazenovia, she worked as a florist, in landscape design, and at Shelburne Farms — a 1,400-acre working farm, forest and National Historic Landmark in Vermont.
Golub cared for the Farms’ terraced gardens from 1976 to 1979.
During their time in Vermont, she and Jimmy developed a close working and personal relationship with Aileen Osborn Webb, who summered on the property and was in charge of its gardens.
Webb was the founder of the American Craft Council and the daughter-in-law of heiress Lila Vanderbilt Webb .
“[Shelburne Farms] is really an amazing place,” Jimmy said. “We cut our teeth there and it was great.”
In 1983 — after relocating to Cazenovia — Golub “wandered” onto the Lorenzo grounds and bumped into site manager Russell Grills.
Golub introduced herself, described her education and experience, and asked whether or not there were gardens on the site.
“He said ‘we don’t have gardens anymore, but we do have a plan that we found in the home dated 1914 from Ellen Biddle Shipman,’” Golub recalled.
Shipman was a renowned landscape architect who was hired by Helen Lincklaen Fairchild to enhance the existing Lorenzo garden with formal perennial beds.
“She was really a pioneer of her time, being a woman landscaper,” Golub said.
After her initial meeting with Grills, Golub was eventually hired to take on the momentous task of transforming the Lorenzo gardens back to their former glory.
Rather than create her own design, Golub decided to use the 1914 Shipman plan as a guide for plant selection and placement.
In an attempt to adhere to the plan as closely as possible, she turned to the community to locate some of the original plants.
According to Golub, when the gardens were let go in the 1970s, the plants were divided and offered to the community.
When reestablishing the formal garden, she placed an article in the paper requesting that the community members donate parts of those plants back to Lorenzo.
Some aspects of the historic plan were more easily recreated than others.
“It’s hard to work from a plan, because the plants don’t always grow the way you want them to,” Golub said.
Some plants didn’t survive the winters and others, like the black peony, were impossible to find.
In such instances, Golub adapted the plan and replaced the varieties with similar plants.
According to Golub, the original plan features an area of ferns and English ivy positioned beneath a large locust tree — a tree that no longer exists.
“The locust tree fell one winter in a storm,” Golub said. “After it fell there was more sunlight, so I had to replace that whole area [with different plants].”
Golub’s solution was to fill in the space with plants from other parts of the garden to create a cohesive aesthetic and sense of “flow.”
Finalizing the plan and establishing the garden was a decade-long process.
“It was all grass, so we had to actually dig up the ground inch by inch,” Jimmy said. “But any gardener will tell you that putting the garden in is less than half the work; it’s the maintenance that’s the hard part.”
Golub said she drew great satisfaction from watching the garden take shape and from continually working to enhance the site.
“[Maintaining the garden] was my life from the middle of April into November,” she said. “I took a lot of pride in making it what it was.”
In addition to recreating the formal garden, Golub planted two additional gardens — one by South Cottage and another by Church Cottage — using her own designs.
She maintained the gardens independently until 1997, when her health took a turn and she began working with a helper.
In recent years, students and volunteers have also provided assistance.
Each June, the Friends of Lorenzo hosts the Garden Gala in support of the continued restoration and maintenance of the Ellen Shipman-designed garden.
“[Before the Garden Gala], many people didn’t know the gardens were even there, so it was nice to get the community out there,” Golub said.
The gardener began stepping away from her duties at Lorenzo in the middle of last summer to focus on her health, maintaining her own gardens, and running the family farm.
Thanks to Golub, Lorenzo’s formal garden is recognized as one of Central New York’s premier country estate gardens.
In 1997, Terry Ettinger, a well-known radio show host and gardening expert, visited Lorenzo and described its garden as a “hidden gem of the community.”
“I think what’s amazing about that garden is how close it is to the plan,” Jimmy said. “If a peony was off by just a foot, we had to move it. It would have been a lot easier to just make a nice garden. I bet if you go to a lot of other places you won’t see a [historic plan] so strictly followed.”
While no longer actively involved at Lorenzo, Golub remains a member of the Onondaga County Master Gardener Volunteer Program.
The Master Gardener Program is a national initiative that trains volunteers in the science and art of gardening. Once trained, master gardeners work in partnership with their local Cooperative Extension offices to share their knowledge with other gardeners and to serve their communities.
Last spring, a Syracuse Garden Club member applied for a Garden Club of America award on Golub’s behalf.
“I had no idea,” Golub said. “When I learned I won I was speechless. To receive a national award was really heartwarming. I feel so proud to have been recognized.”
The Garden Club of America is a volunteer, non-profit organization comprised of 200 member clubs and approximately 18,000 club members throughout the country.
Founded in 1913, the club promotes the recording and enjoyment of American gardens and is a leader in the fields of horticulture, conservation, creative arts, historic preservation and environmental protection.
To learn more about the Garden Club of America, visit gcamerica.org.
