This won’t be an original thought, but asking a reporter to choose her favorite story of the year is a bit like asking a parent to choose a favorite child. This year, however, the gardener in me took the decisive lead and landed on my feature with Vickie Cardaro, founder of Buttercup Design Group, a landscape studio working mostly on Shelter Island.
I hoped that during our interview I didn’t come off as too much of a “fan girl,” but I also know that’s inevitable when the story subject is as gifted and accomplished as Cardaro — and in a field that personally resonates with me (and every blister, back and muscle ache resulting from hours laboring in the garden).
But more than her talent at designing gardens for harsh climates, pesky deer or in seemingly impossible conditions (“removed every blade of grass!” per one client’s instruction), it was Cardaro’s generosity of time and spirit that planted me in forever fandom. I know I am not the first reporter to ask the questions about her celebrity clientele or famous projects, and yet she answered those questions with intention, enthusiasm and humor — as if this was the first time anyone had ever asked.
I also loved her modesty. Reluctant to toot her own horn, she truly gives new meaning to “down to earth.” Indeed, she seemed to wonder, at times, how she came to be on a hot list in her profession. “People have said to me that they always know when it’s one of my designs,” she told me. “I don’t know what that is, but I suppose there’s just something about it that evokes a sensibility.”
I loved that Cardaro also admitted that her own garden was a case of the shoemaker’s children having no shoes, and called it “a constant laboratory,” for experimentation and an “orphanage/hospital for found/donated/inherited trees and shrubs.”
But all that aside, I also loved working on this story for the beautiful imagery, the inspiration and the hope it gave an amateur gardener like me to make something beautiful out of a lump of earth.
