A field trip to the Schnormeier Gardens

The Schnormeier Gardens are highly rated in horticultural circles. They were judged a top ten world-wide garden destination in an Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine and an award-winning book, Schnormeier Gardens; Peace Harmony and Serenity by anthropologist Scot Long has increased its fame.

For several years the family has been holding an Open House for a few days in June when a limited number of visitors can pay $50 per car to park and then tour the gardens on foot. There are no sidewalks, no refreshment stands, no water fountains, nor even level paths across the manicured lawns from one garden to another, although there are rest rooms.

Some of us Bristol Village garden enthusiasts were game enough for this experience to tough it out and pay the price. Twelve of us rode in three cars for the two-and-a-half hour trip on the second Saturday of June. The weather was ideal.

Avoiding major highways took us through picturesque farm land and lovely old small towns. We saw an extensive Community Yard Sale in Kingston. It looked like half the town had furniture and other goods to sell including a gorgeous parlor organ out on a front lawn. In Granville we were detoured around a well-attended bicycle road race. Then in Mount Vernon we could see that a festival of some kind was going on with groups of college students strolling around the town.

Once at the Gardens we decided to meet back at the entrance in two hours. It turned out that that did not allow too much time. Even those of us with orthopedic problems found greater endurance than expected because of our immersion in the beauty of the place.

At the highest point on the landscape is the Serenity Garden with a Japanese Garden House surrounded by a variety of rare conifers. The climb was worth it. A crystal clear pond fed by a deep well aquifer overlooks a panorama of meadow, forest and sky.

Inside the Garden House above a richly carved altar table is a hanging scroll in Chinese calligraphy of a saying that I later learned reads, “Although you are an old horse you can still run a thousand miles.”