Branch Brady's Asian Garden

Branch Brady- Walled Garden, Asian influence…from Polly K

     While Branch Brady is primarily associated with running, his passion for growing things is ever present at his home and property in Woodland Estates.

     Brady has developed his own park like environment with grassy plains, hillside vegetable gardens, rock walls, ponds, and blooming flowers. His landscape is ever changing as he works to incorporate new ideas within his realm.

     A couple of years ago, on the sight of his old vegetable garden, Brady noticed that the nearby cottonwoods had invaded the soil and he could no longer keep enough water on his plants.  He had a thought.  Why not build an enclosed garden?   

     For Brady, there’s always a method and a reason, and the longer he thought about it, his passion only deepened for a walled garden, miles away from Asia where exotic plants are placed to create areas of aesthetic pleasure as well as contemplation and meditation.

     He had no drawn plan for the project but he knew the size would be determined by the outside dimensions of the old garden.  That was easy.  Yet, he needed rocks, fencing, and shingles to begin with.

  “Most of what I do is predicated on raw materials showing up,” says Brady who likes to think that he was “green” before it was popular. He repurposes objects explaining that “trash goes to the dump, but junk can be recycled.”

     Brady’s house and gardens sit on sand dunes next to the Missouri River.  Rather nice for a beach, but a dilemma when creating a growing space.  There are no rocks or stones.

     When a neighbor across the road bought land, it had a gravel pit, with little soil and lots of sandstone. He just wanted to get the stone out of there and told Brady to take it. 

     “That allowed me to build,” says Brady, referring to the three foot high flat dry stack wall around the perimeter of the walled garden.

     Another neighbor sold his horse pasture and tore down the fencing of cedar gates.  Brady brought them home, disassembled them, and used them to enclose the wall.  One of the gates became the frame and entry door.  For the door, he added steel on the outside for strength and used the hinges from the original gates.  It is a small design that allows for lowering your head to enter the humble door,  a salvaged architectural piece.

     Having rescued shingles that he helped tear off a friend’s home, Brady looked to that stock pile to cap off the wall.  The shingles enclosed the wall, and he was ready to landscape.

     The reclaimed stone and wood made a rugged, but refined statement playing a key role in setting the atmosphere for the elements within the walled garden.

     The idea of Asian style landscaping is based on the concept of recreating a large landscape on a much smaller scale.  It becomes an outdoor sanctuary where plants play back up to beautiful garden features.

     Water Features

     Once inside the walled garden, Brady used granite boulders from Big Sandy that he carved into for a water fixture, and then, added a small bridge and water. There is energy from the silent sound of the softly moving power of the water.  The cascading stream flows out creating motion and relaxation.

     Planting

      Landscape plants surround the inside of the Asian inspired gem of a garden.  The planting is on- going, though, all have been kept in place.  There are multiple ferns with long fronds.  A dwarf Korean lilac, Miss Kim, blooms next to a Chinese porcelain barrel seat. There are three Japanese maples, two of which are red in foliage.   Contorted filberts weave their unusual way along the wall.  A tri colored Beech tree stands healthy and proud not far from a beautiful Tiger Eye Sumac. 

     “Some of the plants are not supposed to grow in our climate. I have to take them out in winter and put in the garage,” said Brady.  “Some of them I wrap with concrete screen and mulch for winter.  I bury them literally.”     

     Walkway

     Brady wanted a hard surface walkway.  Japanese and Chinese gardens always have one.  His first choice was clay tiles, but he couldn’t find them.  Then, he saw scraps of slate thrown in a dumpster on new home sight.  He asked if he could use these remnants.  He still needed something to make the field (background).  He used brick from a chimney in an old homestead that he cut into rectangles.  Within the pattern of the walkway, cherry blossoms are cut out marble floor tile from a leftover project in his house.   Brady’s son- in-law drew designs of the blossoms on concrete board and then added the flowers and leaves.  There are four cherry trees in the walkway.

     Brady constructed the walkway on a series of panels in his workshop over the winter.  It became quite an intense project with all of the cutting, fitting, and process of assembling.  He was finished and ready to lay it down last year.

     Sculpture features

     Brady built two red benches in a typical “pi” shape which give them color and a simple Asian look.

     Across from the meandering stream, the erect rock formation sculpture symbolizes Asian stylized mountains often immortalized in walled gardens.  Brady found large rocks near a friend’s cabin along Swan Lake that he cut and bolted together to copy that range of mountains.

     The whisper of water and the hidden paradise within Brady’s walled garden respond to this quiet peaceful place to reflect, contemplate, and entertain.  Brady recently surprised family and friends by hiring harpist Megan Coffin to come and play complimenting the ever present atmosphere of meditative serenity.