CELS alumna looks to the past to create her modern business

Cindy Brockway (left) who specializes in historic garden design and Joan Youngken project coordinator for the restortion of the Hale House Museum in Perryvillie. The front yard needs lots of work including the possible removal of a privet hedge

By RUDI HEMPE
CELS News Editor & Reporter

When it comes to gardens and landscapes, Cindy Brockway loves to dig into the past, literarily and figuratively.

She loves it so much she has fashioned for herself a niche business that got its beginnings in horticulture classes at URI.

The 1980 graduate is owner of Past Designs of Kennebunk, Maine, a one-woman operation that specializes in resurrecting old garden and landscape designs for historic properties and even provides designs for new buildings whose owners wish to capture a bit of the past.

Two of her projects currently are in South County—the famous Smith’s Castle, just outside of Wickford and the Hale House Museum in Perryville.

Restoration of the Smith’s Castle’s grounds has been an on-again, off-again project for decades. Currently the historic gardens there involve URI Master Gardeners.

Cindy Brockway, URI alumna, has built a unique nichie business in the landscape design field

In 1953, says Brockway, a plan was developed for a colonial garden there but Hurricane Carol the next year devastated the site. Then the South County Garden Club took care of it. Now it is under the care of the URI Master Gardeners program. Castle volunteers still have the original plan, she says, and are using the plans as part of a larger study of the Castle landscape. Since April she has been studying the site evidence and collecting old photographs, deeds, plans and maps of the property. This fall, archaeologists will conduct an extensive survey of the property using special instrumentation. The Smith’s Castle project is typical of her work in that it is ongoing over a period of time, often dependent on what resources are available.

So too is the Hale House Museum which she predicts will take about three years

to accomplish.

The Hale House was built in 1873 by William B. Weeden, a Providence manufacturer, for his friend Edward Everett Hale, a famous minister and author (The Man Without a Country). The site was Weeden’s farm and it was his intent to get Hale to live there in the summer to attract other intellectuals to the community.

And quite a house it is. It has nine bedrooms, three stories and a porch. When it was built, it apparently was in the middle of a hay field, according to an old photo, but now it sits very close to Route 1 and its heavy traffic. The house was up for sale for awhile but there were no buyers apparently because it was so close to the road.

Last year, it was announced that an anonymous person had arranged to buy the house from the owner, Elizabeth Steere of Providence with the intention of giving it and a certain amount of operational funds to the Pettaquamscutt Historical Society.

Joan Youngken, project coordinator for the society, said the anonymous donor can now be identified—Ken Woodcock.

The society plans to restore the house and its grounds and open it as a museum. That use, said Youngken is far more fitting today because of the proximity of the road and the fact it lies a short walk up the hill from the Robert Beverly Hale Library (named after Edward Everett Hale’s son, an aspiring author who died at age 23 after drinking contaminated water.)

While the “front yard,” so to speak, is close to Route 1, the backyard overlooks Wash Pond, a picturesque pond that supplied water for the house. The house is on about two acres of land that includes a boathouse which is fine shape and a run-down two-car garage that must have been added well after the house was built.

The site will be an interesting challenge for Brockway who with Youngken gave a tour of the property to this writer.

The house sits atop a hill and at one time, before trees grew up, offered distant views of the ocean—something possible now only from the third floor windows. The topography seems to have been rearranged at one time, possibly to accommodate a water piping system—large diameter pipes are visible here and there.

The challenges for Brockway are many. A museum will need parking and right now the yard has a capacity of only four vehicles. A new septic system will be needed and handicap access is a must.

While she is not responsible for those needs, she has to advise the design of the new landscape with them in mind. Brian Gravell, a local landscape architect, will produce the final drawings for the project.

The historic garden at Smith's Castle in Wickford is another project involving Cindy Brockway's firm, Past Designs.

On the west side of the house are huge rhododendrons that nearly touch the house and are as tall as the second story.

In the front yard is a long curved privet hedge that may or may not survive the changes that will be coming. Then there is a steep slope down to the road.

The job of restoration appears daunting. But, says Brockway, Hale “left an incredible collection of letters” from which she can glean clues about the house and its grounds. Right now, she admits, “There are lots of questions and no answers.”

But that’s the way she likes it—challenging.

She grew up outside of Springfield, Mass., with an interest in historic gardening and landscapes.

She chose to come to URI because the much closer UMass campus was too big for her taste.

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