Garden face-lift

After years in the sun and wind, Bhumi Devi could use some body work, perhaps a dermabrasion—“just a smidge,” quips Florence Andresen ’57. Along with the refurbishing of Bhumi the earth goddess statue, Andresen is overseeing other repairs in 6,000-square-foot Alumni Memorial Garden, behind Skidmore’s Surrey-Williamson Inn.

The statue had been donated by sculptor Barbara Stroock Kaufman ’40, who died this fall. Having stood at the center of the garden since 2005, Bhumi was recently removed for cleaning. Garden stalwart Betty Hartz Hewitt ’57 met with engineers in Vermont to plan the restoration of the statue, which will be remounted on a new steel base in the spring.

Also being rehabbed is the garden’s curving east wall, whose stones and footing had been undermined by tree roots. Masons and arborists got to work on it in October, while alumni volunteers took care of mulching, covering flower urns, and putting the beds to bed for the winter. Benches and gazebos in the garden are being rebuilt as well. Andresen credits Skidmore’s facilities and grounds staff for its work year-round and especially on these special projects to help prepare the garden for its first inclusion in a Saratoga Soroptomists Club garden tour next summer. (It was extensively covered in the 2010 book Saratoga in Bloom.)

Back in the early 2000s the garden was proposed by Barbara Mansfield Saul ’57 and got its start under at least six green thumbs, those of classmates Andresen, Hewitt, and Marg O’Meara Storrs. “I’ve done a lot of weeding and watering,” says Saratoga resident Andresen. “And in recent years, Diana Clark Crookes ’69 has recruited volunteers from the ’60s classes. They love it and we love it—the working together.” From May to October, Crookes, Leslie Valk Benton ’69, Sharon Walker Boyd ’66, Nancy Coull Erdoes ’66, Laura Lee ’67, and Betsey Chandler Sutton ’67 volunteer in teams of four that alternate which months they take charge of garden maintenance. “It’s that constant attention,” Andresen says, that accounts for the garden’s beauty all season long.

She loves to see people using the area: “The chaplain has brought students there to talk in a serene place. The president brings guests there. I see people sitting on a bench reading a newspaper.” And she continues the pre-Commencement tradition of having senior-class officers plant a flower near the brick engraved with their class year. It’s her way, she says, of “making sure each class realizes the garden is here for them, always, to honor a classmate’s memory.”

To learn more or to support an endowment for the garden’s upkeep, contact Beth Brucker-Kane in donor relations.