Cloud's End



Advocate staff photo by Bill Feig Chuck Booksh and Van Landry transformed an empty suburban lawn into Cloud's End, a garden that will be featured on next month's Friends of LSU Hilltop Arboretum Garden Tour.

Want to visit Cloud's End, the garden created by Chuck Booksh and Van Landry? You have a couple of options.

Check out Cloud's End at its popular Web site, http://members.home.net/cloudsend. Or you can get an even closer look during next month's Friends of LSU Hilltop Arboretum Garden Tour.

Since the Melrose Place garden tended by Booksh and Landry went on line a year ago, their Web site has gotten some 3,500 hits.

Landry, a counselor at Family Service of Greater Baton Rouge, launched the Web site "to get exposure, to share it with other people." Since then, the site has attracted visitors from around the world, including Tasmania, New Zealand, England and Singapore.

Though both Booksh and Landry have enjoyed the response to their Web site, they quickly agree that a real-life encounter with Cloud's End is even better.

"There is a lot that you miss if you don't see it in person," Landry said. "It's a calm, restful place."

"There's fragrance," said Booksh, assistant manager of LSU Theatre. 'There's birds singing.'

When Booksh and Landry bought their house in 1993, it was easily visible from the end of Cloud Drive. Booksh called the place Cloud's End as anhomage to "Howards End," the E.M. Forster novel that's one of his favorites. In naming the house, Booksh took another bow toward England, where the naming of residences is an ancient tradition.

"We like the English cottage garden look," said Booksh, an unabashed Anglophile. "I'm almost half English."

Kew, a household cat and the garden's mascot, is named after England's famous Kew Gardens. British culture also influences the garden's rose walk, which emphasizes varieties marketed by David Austin, England's legendary rosarian.

"We've got about 15 or 20 of his roses," Booksh said. "We don't have many hybrid teas. They're weak plants that require a lot of spraying."

"What we like about the David Austins is their old-fashioned look," Landry added. "They have full blooms and a nice fragrance."

Visitors enter the garden through a large arbor laced with a 'Ramona' clematis and a climbing 'Prosperity' rose. "We planted that rose before we even thought about putting the arbor in," said Booksh. The Ramona's most prominent feature is its blossoms, which Landry described as large, flat and bluish purple.

From the entrance, visitors travel along a sandstone walk installed by Landry. To the left, several varieties of climbing roses run along rebar refashioned into trellises. Other roses lie closer to ground level in a series of raised beds mulched with leaves.

"Not a leaf leaves this house," said Booksh, who mulches with leaf litter instead of commercial applications such as pine bark. "I go around the neighborhood and find bags of leaves that people are bringing to the landfill."

As the leaf mulch decomposes, it provides roses with helpful nutrients. "I fertilize occasionally with alfalfa pellets and rose food," Booksh said. "Because we put a lot of leaves in, we fertilize as little as we can."

The walk culminates in a huge 'Mermaid' rose that rises 12 feet and spans 20 feet across. "We put in four 4-by-4's just to support it," Landry said.

Because of the Mermaid's size and its menacing thorns, Booksh and Landry were discouraged from buying one. "We have so many scars from dealing with these roses, but it's worth it," Booksh said. In spring, the Mermaid produces buttery yellow blooms. "I hope the cold weather holds the peak blooming off" until the garden tour, he added.

When Booksh and Landry acquired Cloud's End eight years ago, the back yard featured an ornamental pear tree, a couple of oaks, a wide lawn and little else. Slowly, they replaced all but a tiny strip of grass with walks and flower beds. "We've got about five or six minutes of mowing," Booksh said.

Along with roses, Cloud's End includes a striking display of pampas grass and beds loaded with Southern garden staples: dogwood, yarrow, hostas, pintas, purple asters, snow poppies, rudbeckia, dahlias, honeysuckle and irises, among many others.

Cloud's End covers a half-acre lot, but Booksh and Landry don't have an automatic watering system. "These last two summers, we've moved a lot of hoses around," Booksh said.

Though it's a lot of work, Booksh prefers to handle his garden chores by hand. "I really do like to weed," he said. "You get to know the garden better if you're weeding it. I think there's a difference between a garden and a landscape. A garden is where you become very intimate with the plot. You really get to know your garden when you're out there pulling weeds in a particular plot."

What's next for Cloud's End? "Maybe we'll put in more lighting," Landry said. "I'd like to have a small fountain -- some kind of water feature," said Booksh.

But Booksh and Landry have no immediate plans for additional large plantings. "Now, we really don't have any place to expand," Booksh said. "I think we're approaching the point where it's full."