Acres of whimsical gardens open to public
13 ACRES OF WHIMSICAL GREEN SPACE IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Off North Salem Road in Ridgefield, there’s a small gravel turnoff you probably wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it. This is where you will find the Garden of Ideas.
It’s billed as a place to “stroll” and “ponder,” and that’s just what it is — 13 acres of landscaped, but not manicured, gardens with sculptures hidden throughout and little seating areas tucked within the greenery. It falls somewhere between the Secret Garden and Alice in Wonderland.
The property is owned by Joe Keller and his family. His parents bought the first parcel of land in 1973 and the family has lived on it ever since. Keller worked for his family’s landscaping business in high school and when he came back from college, he started his own landscaping company and bought some of the family land for him and his wife, Lisa Svendsen, to live and work on.
Fifteen years ago, he opened the garden to the public and self- funded it as a free space for people to explore 365 days a year from dawn to dusk. In 2012, Keller and his wife started a nonprofit called Friends of the Garden of Ideas to fund the maintenance of the space. The nonprofit owns one acre and Keller’s goal is to buy the rest of the land from his family.
On a cold and rainy Sunday that happened to be Mother’s Day, I took my mom to see Keller’s curious garden. Keller said he gets about 4,000 visitors a year. In 2017, Yankee Magazine named Garden of Ideas one of the Best Public Gardens in New England, which helped draw some crowds.
A dirt path beckoned us from the parking lot into the thick of the garden; a handpainted sign let us know we were headed toward the vegetable garden and the chickens. We were greeted by a metal sculpture of a man balancing a smaller man on his hand. Keller and Svendsen discovered a sculptor on a trip to North Carolina 20 years ago and brought back a truckload of sculptures. Along the trail there was a small garden shed with a stained- glass window and a formal English- garden- style seating area where one would imagine the Mad Hatter might host a tea party.
The pathway leads to an open space that is the heart of the garden. It’s inhabited by a couple of metal Rastafarians, a greenhouse with a matching stained- glass window to the garden shed, a hand- sculpted wind turbine, a magnolia tree and hundreds of springtime flowers whose petals were succumbing to the weight of the raindrops. We stepped inside the greenhouse for a little warmth and to see some seedlings popping up from their seedbeds.
Seeking a bit of company in the silent garden, I wanted to find the chickens. Luckily, there was a sign clearly marked “chickens” pointing the way, but first, we stopped to check out a treehouse of sorts built a couple feet above a thick marsh. It conjured up images of mosquitoes on a hot summer day. We imaged this would be a good spot to scout out frogs, but alas there was no wildlife in sight, so onward with our quest to find the chickens.
Up in the woods, we found them. On nicer days, the chickens are free to roam free, but this day they were cooped up. Inside the coop there were a number of hens and majestic black and red roosters — one serenaded us with its crow. A mother hen tended her chick.
We headed back through the enchanted garden to the parking lot where another entryway leads to a winding boardwalk over a marsh. We walked through reeds and lily pads and stopped to listen to the sounds of birds and crickets in the distance and raindrops scattering on thickly vegetated water. Red- winged blackbirds played along the edge of the boardwalk showing off the bright spots on their wings, which are more orange than red.
Back at the welcome station, we noticed we had missed out on a game. Instructions were posted on how to find a garden gnome hidden somewhere within; the winner gets to take a prize from a box — the honor system again.
For a second I thought, “Should I go back and find it?” But I was too lulled into tranquility to bother.
Like Keller says, “People just want a peaceful few minutes in their day.”