© Janet Davis
Several years ago, I was privileged
to attend a photography workshop in New Brunswick taught by acclaimed
photographers Freeman Patterson and André Gallant. Several of our sessions took place in the beautiful
meadows and woodlands at Shamper’s Bluff, Freeman’s home. Just a few years later, he endured a dramatic
brush with death that made him celebrate life – and gardening – anew. This is the story of his reawakening.
It is spring once again at Shamper’s
Bluff. As sunshine warms the meadows
overlooking the Saint John River, awakening the tiny lupines nestled in the
grasses, teasing open the tightly coiled fiddleheads and quickening the sap of
the brilliant pink rhodora, 
Freeman Patterson is filled with a
gardener’s familiar sense of anticipation.
But this spring, thirty years after returning to New Brunswick from a
peripatetic career as a teacher and photographer to build his home and workshop
on the very hilltop meadow where he’d “brought in the hay” as a youngster, he
is also exquisitely aware that he came very close to losing it all.
It was late at night in January
2000 when he got the call. After nine
years of declining health caused by serious liver illness, his name had arrived
at the top of the organ transplant waiting list. With just one hour’s notice, feeling
optimistic and even fearless, he was whisked by plane from Saint John to
Halifax to undergo twelve hours of surgery.
But, as with five-percent of transplant recipients, his body rejected
the new liver. The hours ticked by as
friends and relatives gathered at the bedside where he now lay unconscious and
in grave condition. Though an emergency
call went out, it was three days before another organ was located, flown to
Halifax and transplanted in a second operation -- one which he was given less
than a one-percent chance of surviving.
Miraculously, he awoke more than a month later to hear his surgeon say,
“Freeman, you should know you have won the Lotto 649 five weeks in a row.”
He also learned that not one, but
two grieving families had given him the precious gift of life. It would make him a vocal supporter of the
organ donation cards that most of us sign and carry in our wallets. And the following summer when he was finally
able to resume gardening, he experienced week after week of what he describes
now as “daily euphoria” -- something psychologists view as common in those who
have had a life-defining experience that brings the present into clear focus. “I don’t think that last summer my garden was
more beautiful than in previous years,” he says, “but I have never appreciated
it more.”
Shamper’s Bluff stretches over 250
rolling acres of prime southern New Brunswick real estate. Of fifty acres under cultivation, twenty below
the road are farmed for hay while thirty on the hillside below the house are
maintained as natural meadows. Ribboned
through with a series of winding paths that Patterson cuts in early spring with
the lawnmower, these fields are where masses of lupines grow amidst timothy
grass, oxeye daisies and other wildflowers. With their luminous candles of
white, pink and purple, the lupines number around half-a-million now, the
descendants of a handful he found struggling in a ditch the spring after he
moved in and transplanted onto higher ground, along with seeds of the colourful
Russell hybrids. Once every year or two
-- in autumn, when the flowers have set seed and the bobolinks and tree
swallows have finished nesting – the meadows are mown to control growth and 
reduce the fire hazard.
To one side of the house, an area
of 3 acres has been carefully maintained as shrubby understory with native
species such as Canada rhododendron (Rhodora canadense), blueberry (Vaccinium
angustifolium), bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum) and sumac (Rhus
typhina). Behind the house, a large
tract of forest is gradually reverting to its original composition of maple,
paper birch, aspen, hemlock and spruce, with painted and red trilliums beneath. With three-quarters of the property
surrounded by the Saint John River, marshes support bog plants and provide
nesting grounds for sandpipers and other aquatic birds.
The most domesticated gardens – and
the most colourful -- lie between the barn and the house. Here, great swaths of annual wildflowers are
seeded each spring, producing a riot of season-long colour. Patterson used to buy seed mixes but now buys
individual seed of the species he likes and mixes them together in fine sand
which he scatters on the freshly cultivated soil. Favourites include linaria, godetia,
baby-blue-eyes, bachelor’s buttons and Shirley, Iceland and California
poppies. The annuals combine with a
permanent roster of hardy perennials such as delphinium, echinacea, painted
daisy, rudbeckia and phlox. Brilliant
colour is welcome as long as it is softened with white, so there are drifts of
Shasta daisy, oxeye daisy and bride’s bouquet (Achillea ptarmica)
too. Many native plants that grow in the
meadows such as yellow Canada lily (Lilium canadense) are introduced to
the garden where they “double their height and triple their bloom”, while a few
from the garden, such as liatris or rudbeckia, are moved into the meadows
He also grows dozens of rugged
shrub roses, recalling a poignant story he related in his 1996 autobiography Shadowlight,
one of ten books he as written. He
started gardening as a 10-year old, making beautiful flower gardens that
contrasted sharply with his strict father’s vegetable garden and its rows of
carrots, turnips, peas and corn. The
spring before he left home for university, he planted an old-fashioned shrub
rose, tending it carefully and thrilling at the blossoms it produced the first
summer. But when he returned home after
exams the following spring, the rose was gone, dug up by his father who feared
“it might spread”.
“You see, that experience when I
was young represents the two sides of the family,” says Patterson now. “On the one hand was my father, who was
entirely left-brained, who felt that time spent on anything aesthetic, especially
flowers, was time wasted; on the other, my mother, who was a farm wife and
worked hard but grew beautiful geraniums on her windowsills and noticed the
flash of light when a flock of birds changed direction, or how lovely the
meadow grasses were in November.”
Unbeknownst to him at the time, he says, his mother was giving him
permission to live the life he has ultimately lived.
These days, Freeman Patterson lives
and gardens at Shampers Bluff as a guest of The Nature Conservancy of Canada to
which the entire property was deeded in 1997.
“It’s called The Shamper’s Bluff Conservancy,” he notes. “They wanted to call it the Freeman Patterson
Conservancy but I absolutely vetoed that.
I’ll have my lifespan and some people living now may remember me, but
this place is for the foxes and the deer and the birch trees and the
hay-scented ferns – the first owners, so to speak.”
Together, he and the Conservancy
make all the decisions affecting the property.
“We humans have extremely limited use,” he says. The two groups permitted to visit are local
school children whose teachers have developed an ecological program or those
involved in natural sciences or the arts.
Included in the latter group are members of the photography workshops he
has given nearby for some three decades now, in recent years with teaching
partner André Gallant. It was my
privilege a few years ago to spend a week at one of these workshops, learning
from Freeman and Andre and enjoying firsthand the many natural delights of
Shamper’s Bluff.
Life is good for Freeman Patterson,
and he is philosophical about the past few years. “I would not wish what I had to go through
on my worst enemy– either before the transplants or after I woke up – but I
feel enormous gratitude that I went through it.
I could not be where I am emotionally today if I had not had that
experience.”
(To learn more about Freeman
Patterson’s writing and art, visit
his website.)
How the Nature Conservancy
of Canada Protects Lands
·
Land being considered for protection by the NCC must meet
specific criteria established through conservation science. These include unique landforms; diversity of
habitat and/or plant and animal communities; natural condition; and rare plant
or animal species.
·
The NCC is currently focusing on the narrow corridor
adjacent to the Canada-U.S. border where a large population and significant
development threaten already diminished natural areas.
·
Once the NCC’s Science Advisory Committee has identified
land considered to be vulnerable, securement officers meet with the owners to
attempt to negotiate an agreement to legally acquire and then preserve the
land.
·
After purchasing the property, the NCC ensures that the
lands are well-managed, continue to be conserved and their values protected,
thus sustaining into the future the natural ecosystems they support.
·
Stewardship for NCC properties varies according to the
complexity and individual properties of the land. Some are NCC-managed while others become part
of national or provincial parks. A few,
such as the Shamper’s Bluff Conservancy, exist under legally binding management
agreements that designate a conservation partner to work with the NCC. Within these guidelines, the previous owner
may be granted life interest to reside on the property and assist in its
stewardship. For more information visit The Nature Conservancy of Canada.
Adapted from an article published originally in Gardening Life magazine