One year ago, when Rhonda Shoemaker began scouting gardens in preparation for this month’s Open Days, she was on a mission to find a diversity of styles that hadn’t previously participated in the annual tour. “A prairie has never been shown on a St. Louis open day before. A large water-feature garden has not been a focus on an open day before, so I was really trying to go after categories of things that were new, at least within this program,” she says.
As the St. Louis-based regional ambassador for The Garden Conservancy, a national non-profit dedicated to preserving and celebrating American gardens, Shoemaker is responsible for curating the selection of outdoor spaces that will appear on this year’s Open Days program in St. Louis, an event that invites enthusiasts to visit private gardens across the country.
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Shoemaker’s process began one year ago this month. It involved calling on landscape and nursery association colleagues for leads, she says, and talking to contacts who put her in touch with other local gardeners. “I just kept making calls and inquiring, and that’s kind of how the group came to pass,” she says.
One of those gardeners turned out to be Chris and Tara Siewing, a couple from Sunset Hills who are the owners of Nature’s Re-Creations, a company specializing in the design and construction of custom outdoor water features. Their backyard garden, inspired by Chris’s childhood lake adventures, features a recreational pond with hundreds of fish and aquatic plants, and it’s one of the five gardens featured on this year’s tour.
“People are innately drawn to water,” he says “Everybody goes to the beach for a vacation, goes to the lake, myself included.” Introducing the magic of water-feature gardens to more people is one of the reasons he and Tara wanted to participate in Open Days. “One of our biggest passions is trying to get people to come and enjoy and relax around the water,” he says. “And that’s the whole point of doing the water. It’s a different atmosphere and a different mentality of clients. People tend to just fall in love with these things,” he says.
The Garden Conservancy supports expanding its reach beyond traditional, European-styled estate gardens, says Shoemaker, though “those are important, don’t get me wrong,” she adds. “But with my deep knowledge of horticulture and the horticulture industry, I’m very aware of all the different threads of horticulture that are out there.”
In addition to the Siewing’s Fox Mountain Falls garden, St. Louis Open Days will feature: a wetland prairie garden with a large array of wildlife and a view of 100-plus species of grasses and forbs planted from seed. Its owners see the garden as a way to promote biodiversity and encourage conservation; an original Russell Page-designed garden, whose elegant design had been covered up under layers of vegetation, but was beautifully restored when the blueprints were discovered in a box in a basement; a garden with various “rooms” to explore, including hundreds of white daffodils planted in an ivy border. Its design reflects the work of landscape architect Edith Mason’s original design in the brick patio, garden walls, and gates; and a garden designed in 1924 by Warren Manning of Boston, who apprenticed under Frederick Law Olmsted. Now largely a meadow, this final garden also features an English perennial border, a white peony and English boxwood garden, terraces, and fountains — and holds a place in the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens.
Shoemaker will start looking for gardens for 2027 the day after this year’s event. First on her wishlist is a foodscape garden. “I was really gung-ho about bringing a well-curated foodscape garden because it’s such a strong movement in horticulture now. But we also want it to be an aesthetic, intellectual experience,” she says.
This year’s curation highlights enough elements to capture visitors’ interests and imaginations, she says, with all parts of the property buttoned up. No less would do for the St. Louis garden community, which Shoemaker describes as avid, supportive, and excited. “That’s partly why I’m in horticulture, because I feel like the group of people who love plants and who love experiencing gardens and outdoor garden creations are so friendly and want to share and tell stories,” she says.
St. Louis Open Days is scheduled for Saturday, May 30. Tickets are on sale now.
