A Final Peg, a Wetting Bush, and the Start of a New Era

by Felix Carroll

On a chilly, wet Saturday, Jan. 21, a barn was raised! In a ceremony to mark a milestone, Berkshire Botanical Garden (BBG) staff, trustees, and friends watched as the final truss was put into place by means of an hydraulic hoist.

Board of Trustees Chairman Matthew Larkin did the honors of hammering in the final oak peg for the framed-out structure that, by summer, will serve as the new heart of BBG's popular Farm in the Garden Camp.

"This building is going to be a wonderful addition to the Garden and will be a place where we're going to be able to continue to do great work to create the next generation of environmental stewards, the next generation of gardeners, and it is going to be a wonderful, aesthetically beautiful space," said BBG's Executive Director Thaddeus Thompson

Before the final truss was hoisted, Barbara and Melissa Leonhardt, who, through New York Community Trust, donated the construction funds in honor of their late mother, Anne, were asked to take part in a traditional ceremony. They nailed a bough snipped from a nearby white pine onto the truss. The ceremony pays homage to the trees that went into a particular construction and symbolizes the establishment of the building's "roots." The bough is called a "wetting bush."

"It joins the land and the building together," explained Scott Brockway, of Berkshire Wood Products in Windsor, Mass., who serves as the project's manager and sawyer. He harvested and milled eight species of trees for the project. Most of the trees are from within a four-mile radius of his mill. Some come from the BBG's' own woods.

The building is 30-foot-by-50-foot, single-story, 18 feet tall. It will include a wing with bathrooms and a sizable root cellar. Assembled using old world post-and-beam construction with many notable innovative engineering and design elements, the building will have its official ribbon cutting this spring at BBG's annual Roy Boutard Day on Sunday May 7.

Larkin, who did the initial design for the building, and A.J. Schnopp Jr. Construction Inc. was general contractor.

Schnopp introduced Larkin to Brockway and Adam Miller who completed the plan. The 30-foot-by-50-foot portion of the Farm in the Garden Camp building will function as an unheated pavilion.

Brockway called the building "functional art." Miller added, "I consider it [what we do] a craft."

Miller and Brockway incorporated one final touch with a nod to tradition. They embedded a penny (with the date when the frame was constructed) under a post.

Greetings from Antarctica. Photo: Lionel Delevingne