Growing history
Akron Beacon Journal (TNS)
KENT, Ohio
In the mid-1900s, thousands descended on Daisy Wolcott’s gardens each May to stroll among her collection of remarkable lilacs.
Until this spring, nearly 60 years had passed since the tours were last offered. But now the family that owns Wolcott’s home is reviving the tradition.
This month, for the first time since the late 1950s, the Lilac Gardens are being opened to the public. Homeowner Eleanor Zavodny and her son, Bob, welcomed visitors recently. They hope to restore the property and save it for future generations to visit.
Daisy Wolcott and her husband, Duncan, started the gardens sometime after their marriage in 1906. Both avid gardeners, they created a series of informal beds filled with new and unusual trees, shrubs and flowers, eventually buying adjacent property to expand.
Daisy’s uncle, William Plum, was a gardener as well, the owner of a huge collection of French lilacs. In 1920, he sent his niece a truckload of cuttings of his choice varieties, which were planted in rows on the Wolcotts’ property. Eventually they added more lilacs until their garden boasted more than 100 varieties.
When Duncan Wolcott died in 1930, the Depression was on, and his widow was left with a family to raise. Her four children included two teenage sons, Bob Zavodny said, so Daisy opened the garden for tours to raise money to send them to college.
She’d put a dish in the garden so visitors could leave their admission fee on the honor system. She charged 10 cents at first, and the admission price was later raised to a quarter, he said.
The tours were a Mother’s Day tradition for nearly 40 years, attracting visitors from far beyond Kent and once reportedly drawing 8,000 people in a single day. Her sons continued the tours for a few years after Daisy’s death in 1955, but eventually they sold the property.
By the time Eleanor Zavodny and her late husband, Stephen, bought the house and its 1.67 acres in 1985, the garden had fallen into neglect. But the historical gardens were one of the attractions that drew them to the property, so with the help of their sons, they set out to restore them.
At the time, the property consisted mainly of a patch of dirt and grass near the house and a tangle of growth farther back, with paths the neighbors had worn through it. The Zavodnys started by creating a formal rose garden with transplants from their previous home in Independence, and then embarked on the laborious process of clearing the property and re-creating the gardens.
Bob Zavodny remembers spending one winter break from college working alongside his father and brother, using machetes to hack away at the grapevines and wild trees that had overtaken one section of the property. They carefully avoided the lilacs, which they could identify by their bark.
The property had about 70 lilacs when the family moved in, some of which couldn’t be saved, he said. Today it has more than 140 varieties, many of them from grower and hybridizer Select Plus in Montreal.
The last two harsh winters stressed the lilacs on the property and stole some of their beauty this spring, but the gardens have other plants and features for visitors to enjoy.
The restored gardens aren’t identical to the originals, because the Zavodnys didn’t have extensive records to guide them. Still, they have the originals’ informal charm.
Paths meander through the gardens, which fill an unusually deep city lot. Trees the Wolcotts probably planted now tower overhead, shading parts of the garden and sheltering the woodland wildflowers Daisy Wolcott loved as well as perennials the Zavodnys have added. A sunnier section is home to weeping larch, lilac and spruce trees, prompting Eleanor Zavodny to nickname it the Crying Garden.
Tulips bloom here and there, survivors from a time when a Kiwanis club planted more than 600 Dutch tulip bulbs on the property, Bob Zavodny said.
A stone wall built in 1926 by the Wolcotts’ sons tops a terraced garden Bob Zavodny created. This summer, he plans to add a waterfall to tumble down the slope and empty into a pond.
At the far end of the property is a food garden, where he grows vegetables as well as fruits including raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries and currants. Closer to the house are a huge katsura tree planted during the Wolcotts’ time, as well as a gingko tree that a Kent State University botanist plans to measure to determine whether it’s the largest in the state.