Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This exacting view is no accident. Andersen spent three For Andersen, the garden’s caretaker and planner, the
years gazing out this second-story window, planning a landscape is primarily about great design and satisfying
crisp, geometric layout that’s broken up on occasion by work in the dirt. For Butler—who freely admits to doing
wily plant limbs and carefree leaves. Considering its me- none of the grunt work—the garden is a first-class space
ticulous look, it’s hard to imagine the whole thing started for hosting soirées. (He also loves to catch rays in the
on a lark. Three years ago, when the house next door went sunken garden, though Andersen had to be persuaded to
up for sale, Andersen and his partner, Eric Butler, discov- let his partner lounge around on the perfect grass.)
ered that the land was once a garden attached to their The garden is designed in the English style with six
1930 English Tudor. The south Minneapolis property had rooms (three indoor, three outdoor): the hideaway
been split into two separate lots in 1969. circle garden with the fountain, the rectangular sunken
It was a big and expensive decision to buy and demolish garden two steps down, the upper garden with the
a house to reclaim their property’s original garden, but “the checkerboard motif, the terraces, a screened porch, and
temptation was almost too great to resist,” says Andersen. a sun porch. “The nice thing is that you can’t take it in
all in one gaze. You have to really explore it to see it,”
Andersen says.
During parties, including a 150-guest fundraiser for Lu-
theran World Relief last summer, visitors meander through
the “rooms” and discover the garden’s many surprises,
including the spherical fountain, the sculpture of cubes
by New Mexico artist Frank Morbillo, and the fragrant
magnolias under-planted with boxwood spheres.
At such gatherings, it’s not uncommon to see the chil-
dren of friends run free-form across the grass-and-stone
checkerboard, and then plop down on the stone steps
between big planters of coppery-barked amur choke-
cherry agapanthus. There, they watch movies projected
onto a Norwegian-style pavilion, modeled after a simple
Scandinavian country building, that Andersen grandly calls
the “Performing Arts Center.”
Even strangers have been treated to sublime social
gatherings here. On more than one occasion, the couple
has noticed passersby trying to sneak a peek at the garden.
They love it when that happens, and always run outside to
greet the curious and show them around.
The garden’s unusual tone makes it particularly com-
pelling. Instead of filling the space with bright flowers,
Andersen insisted on a mellow, restrained palette—all