Visiting metro Detroit's Cranbrook Gardens

They say that April showers bring May flowers, so I'm hoping the May rain we've been having here in metro Detroit means we'll see especially beautiful flowers as this season at Cranbrook Gardens unfolds.

Cranbrook's 40 acres of gardens surrounding an Albert Kahn-designed manor home are part of a 319-acre National Historic Landmark campus filled with cultural, architectural and educational gems envisioned by George Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth in the early 1900s.

George, the owner of a successful iron-working company in Windsor, Ontario, married Ellen, the eldest child of the founder of the Detroit News, in 1887.

The couple lived in Detroit as they raised their five children and George moved into the executive ranks at his father-in-law's business. George also invested in other newspapers, building his own publishing company into the largest and most profitable publishing chain in Michigan.

The Booths loved their city gardens, but longed to move to an area where they could have larger gardens. In 1902, they purchased a dilapidated 174-acre farm in Bloomfield Hills, about 25 miles north of downtown Detroit, naming it for an English town where George's ancestors lived.

George worked with a series of notable designers, gardeners, and landscape architects to develop the grounds as the Booths' love of nature and belief that art belonged in every aspect of life guided the integration of architectural and landscape design at Cranbrook.

The Booths summered at Cranbrook until 1908, when they moved into the Kahn house.

In 1909, George Booth approached O.C. Simonds, one of the era's most notable landscape architects, to help design the grounds at Cranbrook.

Simonds trained as an engineer at the University of Michigan, lived in Chicago, taught landscape design at the University of Michigan, and designed landscapes for countless Midwest sites, including: Iowa State University, University of Chicago, Michigan State University, the University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, Detroit's Palmer Park neighborhood, and a section of Woodward Avenue through Birmingham (Michigan).

Booth worked with many designers and contributed many of his own ideas to the designs, so it is difficult point to any specific Simonds design at Cranbrook. However, Booth consulted with Simonds for more than a decade and adopted many of the landscape architect's ideas about using native plants wherever possible and designing based on the a property's natural topography, soil, and climate.

George Booth wanted the gardens to highlight the early twentieth-century Arts and Crafts style of his home English manor home, a vision particularly evident in many of the architectural features throughout the gardens.

While Simonds' ideas heavily influenced the landscape at Cranbrook, the gardens themselves heavily reflect the Booths' own interests and travels.

In 1915, the Booths visited expositions in San Francisco and San Diego where they purchased bronze cranes, a stone lantern, and a dwarf tree for their gardens.

In 1916, Booth began installing a blue-tiled fountain he designed with architect Marcus Burrowes and decorated with a backsplash created by noted Detroit tile artist Mary Chase Stratton. The "Rainbow Spring" fountain was one of Booth's favorite pieces, and I think it may be one of my favorites as well.

There more than 300 species of exotic and native plants throughout the gardens. Specialty gardens include an herbal garden, an Oriental-themed garden, a wildflower garden, a peony garden, and Ellen's Garden with plants in her favorite colors of pink and purple.

Heavy expenses threatened the future of the house and grounds after the Booths' deaths in the late 1940s, and some feared it would be necessary to subdivide the property. George and Ellen's son, Henry Scripps Booth, organized auxiliary groups in the early 1970s to help care for the gardens, find new funding sources, and grow the endowment his parents created to maintain the property. Today, the 500-plus-member Cranbrook House and Gardens Auxiliary continues to support the manor and gardens.

Cranbrook held stock in Booth's newspaper holdings. The 1985 sale of the Evening News Association to Gannett resulted in a major infusion of cash for Cranbrook's endowment, effectively saving the site intact for future generations to enjoy.

Visitors can tour the gardens from May through October. An Annual Spring Plant Sale draws gardeners from all over metro Detroit looking for unique plants, flowers, and wildflowers. The gardens are also a popular wedding venue.