Terrie and Arnie Robbins' fabulous house and garden was on view at this year's Central West End Association House Tour, which is when I saw it for the first time. The couple's gardens, which encompass the entire front and backyards, have been on a New City School House Tour, and the 2002 Missouri Botanical Garden Tour. They were also featured in a 2005 Better Homes & Gardens supplement, Garden Ideas & Outdoor Living.
The Robbins' backyard was the last garden landscape designer and horticulturalist Ken Miller created before he ran his Bug Stores full time. The garden was installed in 1998, a year after Terrie and Arnie moved from Minnesota for Terrie's job as V.P. of Marketing at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Arnie was offered a job in the P-D's newsroom where he was promoted to managing editor and seven years later became the editor of the newspaper. He remained in that position for six years before becoming Executive Director of the American Society of News Editors in 2012. ASNE is based in Columbia, MO. (Terrie left the Post-Dispatch in 2006 and went to work doing marketing for St. Louis CORE. She is now happily retired.)
After looking through folders filled with garden pictures Terrie had torn out of magazines, Ken Miller took her three favorites and created three separate garden rooms in a backyard that had been overrun with plantings that were in terrible shape, bordered by a chain-link fence.
The first photo shows the formal, French garden with rows of boxwood in a zigzag pattern edged by an allee of columnar apple trees. Artichoke plants the couple brought back from a trip to Carmel (momentoes from travels play a huge role in the garden) are set between the rows of boxwoods. The artichokes were first planted in pots but when they became too heavy to bring indoors during the winter, the couple decided to see if they would survive in-ground– and they have.
Terrie, who describes herself as being "rather fussy," has learned from Ken Miller to let the garden be "real" and leave the occasional leaf or apple on the ground.
Nick Ruggerio, a local trash artist, created the entry to the backyard and the gate that hides the basement staircase, below.
Terrie, who has loved decorating since she was a child, found a chimney part in the basement and in her words, "stuck in a bunny that was sitting around doing nothing."
Instead of purchasing an expensive sculpture that was called for in the design, Terrie created her own version of that "5 million dollar artwork" by making a blue-bottle tree found in southern and African-American culture, said to bring in the good and keep out the bad. The sculpture is placed on a gravel path at the back of the garden.
A ceramic pot the couple found in Paris is planted with a small tree whose branches are strung with metal charms and chimes—a play on a prayer flag—found in Seattle.
The table above was artist Judy Sell's first sale when Terrie commissioned the table, which was custom-made by the Minnesota artist from pieces of the Robbins' pottery collection.
A bird bath was filled with rocks and planted with begonias, which are both used extensively in the Robbins' garden.
Sambeau's, which was located in the CWE until recently, created an exact replica of a table base from a photograph the couple took in the south of France. It sits on the patio topped by a giant slab of granite with roughed-up edges, shown in the background above.
A charming display on the back steps.
On my second I visit I was able to capture beautiful afternoon light filtering through a Bottlebrush Buckeye underplanted with ferns in the Zen garden on the eastside of the yard.
The Robbins said the front yard had good bones to begin with when they purchased the house. It was already heavily planted. They added to it over the years and now it doesn't look anything like it did in the beginning, as trees have matured and blocked out the sun.
The Robbins learned that the garden was a sanctuary for a feral momma cat. Arnie said she had probably 20 kittens over 5 years. "We tamed them and gave them to friends, to the Humane Society, and by begging people to take them. We now have 6, three in, three always outside charming the neighbors." The three ceramic cat-planters in the frontyard are obviously not related.
The tree lawn at the curb spills over with bountiful Annabelle hydrangeas, which the Robbins love to share. One morning in early summer they send out an invitation to neighbors to bring a cup for coffee and a vase for flowers. This year 15 or 16 people showed up, visited with each other on the front walk, and left carrying home bunches of beautiful blooms.
Thank you to Terrie and Arnie for sharing their beautiful garden with readers of this blog. It's amazing in lots of ways, including that it's located in the middle of the city.