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FeedSummer Blockbuster
A couple’s soirée-friendly garden steals the show
By Alyssa Ford
Photo by Maki Strunc Photography
The view from Chris Andersen’s second-story sun porch is so precise it’s almost puzzling—like a houseplant so vivid and glossy you have to touch it to make sure it’s real. Square and rectangular bluestone pavers line up methodically under the window. A crushed granite walkway surrounds a perfectly centered gurgling fountain, a perfect sphere in a perfect circle. Farther out, squares of Kentucky bluegrass play hopscotch with more bluestone pavers, a living checkerboard artfully dotted with oversized jacks.
This exacting view is no accident. Andersen spent three years gazing out this second-story window, planning a crisp, geometric layout that’s broken up on occasion by wily plant limbs and carefree leaves. Considering its meticulous look, it’s hard to imagine the whole thing started on a lark. Three years ago, when the house next door went up for sale, Andersen and his partner, Eric Butler, discovered that the land was once a garden attached to their 1930 English Tudor. The south Minneapolis property had been split into two separate lots in 1969.
It was a big and expensive decision to buy and demolish a house to reclaim their property’s original garden, but “the temptation was almost too great to resist,” says Andersen.
For Andersen, the garden’s caretaker and planner, the landscape is primarily about great design and satisfying work in the dirt. For Butler—who freely admits to doing none of the grunt work—the garden is a first-class space for hosting soirées. (He also loves to catch rays in the sunken garden, though Andersen had to be persuaded to let his partner lounge around on the perfect grass.)
The garden is designed in the English style with six rooms (three indoor, three outdoor): the hideaway circle garden with the fountain, the rectangular sunken garden two steps down, the upper garden with the checkerboard motif, the terraces, a screened porch, and a sun porch. “The nice thing is that you can’t take it in all in one gaze. You have to really explore it to see it,” Andersen says.
During parties, including a 150-guest fundraiser for Lutheran World Relief last summer, visitors meander through the “rooms” and discover the garden’s many surprises, including the spherical fountain, the sculpture of cubes by New Mexico artist Frank Morbillo, and the fragrant magnolias under-planted with boxwood spheres.
At such gatherings, it’s not uncommon to see the children of friends run free-form across the grass-and-stone checkerboard, and then plop down on the stone steps between big planters of coppery-barked amur chokecherry agapanthus. There, they watch movies projected onto a Norwegian-style pavilion, modeled after a simple Scandinavian country building, that Andersen grandly calls the “Performing Arts Center.”
Even strangers have been treated to sublime social gatherings here. On more than one occasion, the couple has noticed passersby trying to sneak a peek at the garden. They love it when that happens, and always run outside to greet the curious and show them around.
The garden’s unusual tone makes it particularly compelling. Instead of filling the space with bright flowers, Andersen insisted on a mellow, restrained palette—all gray-greens, blue-greens, whites, gray-blues, and soft dabs of violet. Andersen—who was trained as an architect, and is now the executive director of the Lutheran Community Foundation—also zeroed in on shape. With Scott Endres and Dean Engelmann, owners of Tangletown Gardens in Minneapolis, Andersen selected plants that would offer the most geometric and architectural punch with a design of spheres and cubes. Thorned hawthornes, ‘Dakota Pinnacle’ birch trees, ‘Medora’ junipers, and little-leaf lindens form a stiff horizontal backbone. The three designers accented the crisp, angular foundation with contrasting organic shapes such as flowering ‘Red Jewel’ crabapples and airy ‘Karl Foerster’ grasses.
“With his background in architecture, he knew about all the principles of design—shape, scale, and form—but we were able to help him soften the edges of the design and come up with simple but very pleasing plant combinations that we knew were very Chris Andersen-like,” says Endres.
“There are very few accidents in my garden,” adds Andersen. The surprising effect of such a controlled space is that it is remarkably versatile. Party guests can roam in the garden rooms and feel quite at ease—this is a garden that functions like a great room but happens to be outside. But when the guests drive away and empty glasses are piled up in the kitchen, the garden readily takes on its alter ego: private sanctuary. Andersen and Butler go to their favorite spot: a little bench on the movie lawn where they can look back at the lights of the house. In the mornings, they quietly sip coffee on the back patio in matching rocking chairs. It’s during those moments that Butler says he understands what it means to live a truly outdoor lifestyle. He notices the sunlight dappling through the trees, and he picks up on subtle sounds that might be muted in another garden. “I adore the sound of wind through a tree,” he says. “And Chris has spoiled me with that in our garden.”
Alyssa Ford is an associate editor at Midwest Home.
For more information on featured products and suppliers, please see our Buyer's Guide.
This exacting view is no accident. Andersen spent three years gazing out this second-story window, planning a crisp, geometric layout that’s broken up on occasion by wily plant limbs and carefree leaves. Considering its meticulous look, it’s hard to imagine the whole thing started on a lark. Three years ago, when the house next door went up for sale, Andersen and his partner, Eric Butler, discovered that the land was once a garden attached to their 1930 English Tudor. The south Minneapolis property had been split into two separate lots in 1969.
It was a big and expensive decision to buy and demolish a house to reclaim their property’s original garden, but “the temptation was almost too great to resist,” says Andersen.
For Andersen, the garden’s caretaker and planner, the landscape is primarily about great design and satisfying work in the dirt. For Butler—who freely admits to doing none of the grunt work—the garden is a first-class space for hosting soirées. (He also loves to catch rays in the sunken garden, though Andersen had to be persuaded to let his partner lounge around on the perfect grass.)
Photo by Maki Strunc Photography
During parties, including a 150-guest fundraiser for Lutheran World Relief last summer, visitors meander through the “rooms” and discover the garden’s many surprises, including the spherical fountain, the sculpture of cubes by New Mexico artist Frank Morbillo, and the fragrant magnolias under-planted with boxwood spheres.
At such gatherings, it’s not uncommon to see the children of friends run free-form across the grass-and-stone checkerboard, and then plop down on the stone steps between big planters of coppery-barked amur chokecherry agapanthus. There, they watch movies projected onto a Norwegian-style pavilion, modeled after a simple Scandinavian country building, that Andersen grandly calls the “Performing Arts Center.”
Even strangers have been treated to sublime social gatherings here. On more than one occasion, the couple has noticed passersby trying to sneak a peek at the garden. They love it when that happens, and always run outside to greet the curious and show them around.
The garden’s unusual tone makes it particularly compelling. Instead of filling the space with bright flowers, Andersen insisted on a mellow, restrained palette—all gray-greens, blue-greens, whites, gray-blues, and soft dabs of violet. Andersen—who was trained as an architect, and is now the executive director of the Lutheran Community Foundation—also zeroed in on shape. With Scott Endres and Dean Engelmann, owners of Tangletown Gardens in Minneapolis, Andersen selected plants that would offer the most geometric and architectural punch with a design of spheres and cubes. Thorned hawthornes, ‘Dakota Pinnacle’ birch trees, ‘Medora’ junipers, and little-leaf lindens form a stiff horizontal backbone. The three designers accented the crisp, angular foundation with contrasting organic shapes such as flowering ‘Red Jewel’ crabapples and airy ‘Karl Foerster’ grasses.
Photo by Maki Strunc Photography
“There are very few accidents in my garden,” adds Andersen. The surprising effect of such a controlled space is that it is remarkably versatile. Party guests can roam in the garden rooms and feel quite at ease—this is a garden that functions like a great room but happens to be outside. But when the guests drive away and empty glasses are piled up in the kitchen, the garden readily takes on its alter ego: private sanctuary. Andersen and Butler go to their favorite spot: a little bench on the movie lawn where they can look back at the lights of the house. In the mornings, they quietly sip coffee on the back patio in matching rocking chairs. It’s during those moments that Butler says he understands what it means to live a truly outdoor lifestyle. He notices the sunlight dappling through the trees, and he picks up on subtle sounds that might be muted in another garden. “I adore the sound of wind through a tree,” he says. “And Chris has spoiled me with that in our garden.”
Alyssa Ford is an associate editor at Midwest Home.
For more information on featured products and suppliers, please see our Buyer's Guide.
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