Litchfield County Times
Passport Magazine
Many Splendid Things
By Tovah Martin
For Duncan Brine, big is beautiful. Or, rather, his goal is to turn big into beautiful. Actually, his plus sizes run purely in the property realm. He likes the challenge and freedom that large footprints offer for gardening.
Mr. Brine’s own landscape in Pawling, N.Y., is large, but not obese. The garden is composed of six acres on two sides of the road. By local standards, and compared to some of the vast estates in the neighborhood, it isn’t mammoth. And yet, he makes use of pretty much every corner, which helps to expand the experience.
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However, the surrounding acreage isn’t a garden in the conventional sense of the word. It’s more like a movie set. No, no-don’t think of clipped English allées and fountained rose gardens, because that’s definitely not what it’s all about. Rather, think theatrical. And then, go American style. In a way, a Western wouldn’t be too far from the mark. The closest I can come is to call the Brine garden a New England spin on a chaparral, but everything is larger and denser.
If your mind jumps immediately to Hollywood when you arrive at Duncan Brine’s, it’s not surprising. Originally, he planned to be a director. Early in his career, he spent three years in Los Angeles doing film production work for venues including the Faerie Tale Theatre. However, it didn’t take long for him to tire of the L.A. scene, which is how he ended up in New York City….
The News-Times
Duncan Brine: Be mindful of context
By Deb Keiser
When Duncan Brine talks about gardening, he uses terms you might expect to hear during a university lecture on literature or art. Whether it is “regionalism” or “transparency,” he uses the words endearingly and enthusiastically. Brine, who owns Horticultural Design Inc., and tends
a six-acre garden of monumental proportions in Pawling, N.Y., can’t help it.
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To him, gardening is art on a large scale, and it has global implications.A garden can affect the environment ecologically, while it elicits an emotional response from the visitor. With undulating contours that hug the natural landscape of hills and valleys, the Brine Garden works well within its setting, respectfully submitting to the region around it. Yet, through its use of native trees, shrubs and grasses that frame a number of beautiful vistas, it is obvious an artist is at work on this land.
Both Brine and his wife, Julia, have art in their blood. She is a botanical illustrator and graphic designer, and he once was an art director in film. He also wrote the introduction to “The Literary Garden: Bringing Fiction’s Best Gardens to Life” (Berkley Publishing Group, 2001).The transition to rural gardening would seem an unlikely step for the couple, who lived in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, a place where Brine felt he had to sift the soil, literally, to see its composition.
But there was drama in the dirt: In that first garden, he discovered teeth, bullets and his own gardening instinct.
It became clear that he had an eye for gardening as more and more friends asked him for help with theirs. Soon he was hooked, turning his business pursuits to the soil rather than the stage, beginning with small city spaces on rooftops and tiny yards. His clientele expanded, and as it did, Brine felt the need to take on larger projects, leaving the city behind in favor of open green spaces. In 1990, the couple moved to a farmhouse in Pawling, N.Y., and soon after bought the adjoining property.
The two farmhouses sit on an embankment overlooking a marsh and glade, and are surrounded by gravel pathways that connect different garden areas that showcase perennials and horticultural rarities…
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