By Louise Jones
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
How the tireless energy of a couple of volunteers and the generosity of an Australian horticulturist brought North Bennington’s Park McCullough House to its flowery Victorian glory...
We Americans love to visit the luxurious mansions built during what Mark Twain called The Gilded Age, when the rapid growth of industry after the Civil War created vast fortunes. The wealthy heralded their success by building enormous houses, with high-ceilinged rooms and dark woodwork inside, and manicured green lawns thickly studded with shade trees outside. There are two prime examples in southwest Vermont: Hildene in Manchester and the Park McCullough House in North Bennington, a stunning Victorian home in the Second Empire style. Not to miss are the colorful new rose gardens that have been installed recently to revive the grounds.
Looking out of a second floor bedroom window, a visitor comments on the flowers. “That’s where the old tennis court used to be,” Patricia Gordon Michael, Park McCullough House Executive Director, explains. “Most of the roses come from an Australian plant company.” Surprised? I was, and when I asked I discovered the story that led to these colorful new gardens, where the roses in all shades of red, orange, pink, and yellow shimmer in the sun and brighten a cloudy day.
The tale begins with Judie and Bob Brower of Shaftsbury. “I’ve been involved with the Park McCullough House in a peripheral way for close to twenty years,” says Judie, “primarily in the gardens and a little public relations help over the years. Bob has served as a board member and as a fill-in docent, and was actively involved on the Buildings and Grounds Committee when the carriage barn was expanded a few years back for more year-round use.” (The expansion added heat and air conditioning, a kitchen and restrooms.) The Browers held their wedding reception there in 1996. “It’s a very special place for both of us,” she says. But the Browers have a day job—they are in charge of marketing and media placement for Anthony Tesselaar USA, Inc., the American wing of an Australian horticultural company that develops and distributes plants worldwide. The firm’s executives visit this country several times a year and always come to Vermont, “one of their favorite spots in the U.S.,” Judie says. Since Rodney Thorpe, Tesselaar CEO, is a devotee of the Victorian age, it was natural for Judie and Bob to take him to the Park McCullough House about ten years ago. He loved the house and furnishings, but he immediately saw a problem outside. “There was a rose garden that didn’t have many roses, and the few there didn’t look very good,” he recalls. He offered to donate some plants, and during the next few years shipped about twenty rose bushes each year, which were planted in the four central beds.....
