Furniture and gardening share a certain similarity in using disparate elements to make a space attractive. And Donna Blakemore has a passion for making places more attractive whether on workdays selling furniture or on her own time, creating fantastic gardens adorning the Bannerman Island castle in the middle of the Hudson River.
Blakemore, 51, lives in New Windsor. She has a deep understanding of design space, furniture and sales, as well as the quick change a high-end business can experience when an economy collapses into a deep recession.
“I have a pretty interesting story,” Blakemore says. “I went full circle with my career. It moved pretty quickly.”
She sold furniture for some 30 years, starting in her words “in low-end furniture,” but ultimately spending seven years working by day while taking courses at Berkeley College to obtain her degree in design and interior design.
“There was a time I didn”™t think I was going to make it,” she says. “The classes were a lot of work.” The curriculum featured architecture, design, and business.
After graduating, she moved into high-end furniture and design sales, making presentations on windows, floorings and furnishings. “I was selling whole rooms,” she said. “But then with the fallout in the economy, I just couldn”™t make any money. I almost lost my house. So I had to make a change and decided to stay in the furniture business and went back to lower-end furniture. Now I work at Bob”™s Discount Furniture in Poughkeepsie.”
Blakemore is a cheery sort and she laughs as she recounts her career. “I went from sales to interior designer to good old-fashioned sales person,” she said. But she is not bitter. “I am lucky I have a job and am making money and have a house. I just redid my kitchen.”
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Growing up in New Windsor, she had always been fascinated by Bannerman Island, she said, and had even written a paper on the topic in college. But the challenge of coordinating gardening on Bannerman Island was not something she actually volunteered for. “It started with the idea of pulling a few weeds and maybe planting a few flowers here and there,” she said, laughing a bit. “But once you start to get involved in Bannerman”™s Island, it just gets inside you.”
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Historically know as Pollepel Island and now officially known as Bannerman Island-Hudson Highlands State Park, the tiny island in the river was purchased in 1900 by Francis Bannerman, who designed and built the castle there ”“ now a ruin ”“ based on his childhood in Scotland. He used most of the structures to house his private collection of weapons and gun powder, which he acquired as part of his family business interest in running the world”™s first Army-Navy store in Manhattan. But the family did more than sell surplus knapsacks, it also literally outfitted entire army”™s with weapons and equipment.
Just shy of seven acres, 1000 feet from the eastern shore of the Hudson and about fifty miles north of New York City, the island began to deteriorate in the years leading up to World War II and was something of a forgotten icon for decades. The state purchased the property in 1967 and now the Bannerman Island Trust is making headway in preserving the island”™s gaudy structures. Tours are available from the ferry docks at Beacon and Newburgh, but reservations are required.
When Blakemore started clearing the old gardens along with other volunteers in 2006, a plan was devised to create so-called pie-slices of plantings, with eight various themes guiding the work. Francis and Helen Bannerman themselves had designed the original gardens so the modern gardeners tried to stay as historically accurate as possible creating a vegetable garden, a rose garden, atulip garden and an herb garden. The work was helped by discovery of a list made by Mrs. Bannerman listing her purchases.
Like any good gardener, Blakemore took note of what is already there and points out, with some satisfaction, that some of Mrs. Bannerman”™s original plantings survive to this day. Lilacs and forsythias in particular, she said, “Actually line the path,” and there are tripled flower lilies, Siberian iris and, “the strangest thing of all, there are coral bells there.”
Armed with the master list of other plantings from that period, Blakemore put out feelers to various gardening publications, nurseries and other venues seeking some of the items that Mrs. Bannerman had received.
“I thought I could get a few plants donated and before I knew it I had thousands of plants donated,” Blakemore said, adding donations of plants came from as far away as Texas, and often arrived without ceremony at her door.
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“We started clearing in 2006 and then in spring of 2007 all these plants started arriving at my house from all around the country,” said Blakemore. “So now I needed volunteers.”
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The response to her request for helpers “has been great” she said. Some people volunteer to work once others return repeatedly but now the gardens are lovely. “We go over every Wednesday morning, they have a work boat to take us over.”
She said not only has people power proven helpful but donations of gift certificates for Lowe”™s or Home Depot and Walmart made it possible to purchase the tools and soils to make the island bloom again. There was no running water on the island in 2007, so bucket brigades were used to water the new plantings. Now, cadets from West Point have designed a permanent water system. Walmart even donated money and allowed company employees to work on Bannerman”™s Island during their company work time. Overall, she said, the donations have totaled thousands of dollars.
“It was one thing out of another,” said Blakemore. “I can”™t even explain how this little weeding project turned into this huge project. It”™s really just amazing how it evolved.”
The whole thing is historically accurate,” she said. “And the contrast between the gardens and the castle it striking. It softens the ruins. You really feel like you”™ve gone to Europe.”
The number to volunteer is 542-1192.
