Letter: Jones Expansion Would Destroy Kinsey Garden
Caption: Kinsey Memorial Garden, Jones Library. Photo: Art Keene
I am the designer and previous benefactor of the Kinsey Garden, dedicated to the memory of my husband, David Chapin Kinsey, at the Jones Library. From 1999 when the garden was installed with the help of 60 friends, and students /colleagues of my husband’s from UMass, I oversaw the original plantings procured largely with memorial contributions in David’s name with some help offered by Friends of the Jones. From 1999 until 2015, I provided annually from my own funds additional plantings typically costing $1,000 or more per year. Over those 16 years, the garden became a botanically sophisticated publicly valued space featuring uncommon shrubs, perennials, ground covers and impressive stonework.
It beautified the very messy, post-construction space behind the building, adding handsome stone benches and stairs connecting to the History Museum’s 18th century garden. The two gardens had been previously separated by thick clusters of huge weedy trees and masses of ground weeds, removed as part of the Kinsey garden installation, affording between the two historic buildings an expanded greensward in our downtown.
Unlike the grander Carnegie libraries, our Jones Library was designed to provide a “homey” place for community members to meet, read and discuss ideas. The Kinsey garden echoes this unique view, providing a welcome place of respite, offering a calm, lovely green space in which to relax, enjoy uncommon plants, and perhaps meditate on the beauty of nature.
In 2015, despite such major financial contributions over 16 years, my regular oversight of the hired workers and my original and continuing pro bono design of the garden, I was summarily and rudely dismissed by the new Library Director. From then on, the Kinsey Garden has been barely maintained, even less so recently. Lovely unusual ground covers unifying the whole garden were destroyed, trees and shrubs were brutally pruned or completely removed, and weeds now cover most of the sloping hillside and much of other areas.
Before my dismissal, I would receive appreciative comments often from library patrons or visitors who had taken time to enjoy the Garden. Now, I hear frequent concerns and disappointment regarding the poor maintenance and destruction taking place there.
If the Trustees have their way, the entire Kinsey Garden will be gone despite their claims to the contrary. The large trees towards the garden’s edge will certainly not survive the extensive demolition and construction. It is highly unlikely that any trees and shrubs can be moved, then successfully re-planted. And no piecemeal specimen moved to some other spot in the landscape could pretend to be the carefully designed, horticulturally special Kinsey Garden.
Although Trustee President Austin Sarat insists that the garden will be only “changed”, architect Jim Alexander has stated the truth. It will be destroyed.
The destruction of green space in our downtown is an important issue. We should be adding more not destroying an important green asset. However, I am also deeply concerned about the demolition/expansion plan for the building itself. It destroys 40% of the building, costs way more than Trustees are admitting, risks possible damage to the vulnerable History Museum, is aesthetically inappropriate to stuff all the glass and steel into the historic stone scrim of the original structure, and is way oversized for the space it will occupy between two historic buildings.
It would be helpful to survey all town residents regarding their preferences instead of hurrying this process. Given the major expense required for this demolition/expansion plan, a proper evaluation of the building for an alternative innovative redesign within the footprint would be a significant help in making such a big decision. The “Repair Option” is not the same thing. I don’t believe anyone thinks that’s a realistic or appropriate option.
I urge the Town Council to require a moratorium allowing more time to survey many residents and patrons of the Jones. It is in the best interest of our town.
In this era of climate chaos, I repeat the relevant quote from Carl Elefante: “The greenest building is the one that is already built”.
Carol Pope
Carol Pope is the designer of the Kinsey Garden
Thank you so much Carol for all your years of dedication to this wonderful space. I am sorry it has not been maintained by the library for the past six years. You may be happy to learn that one of our daughter’s best friends got married in the garden eleven years ago. She and her husband met on their lunch hour and then went back to work. They now are the parents of ten year old twins. Good memories made in the garden.
Thanks, Maura, for your kind words. I know of many others who have had important ceremonies there before it was so decimated. It always seemed an important value for residents and visitors in many ways.
Carol
Raise a lot of important issues here. Art and Maura do a wonderful job with the Indy, but I think you want to reach mainstream residents. Have you considered submitting this as an op-ed to The Gazette and Bulletin?
Absolutely. Thank you Shel!
I never cease to be amazed at how many residents ask after the deed (e.g., Boltwood Place, Kendrick Place, One East Pleasant) is done….how did that happen?
Carol Pope is too courteous to say it, but “the very messy, post-construction space behind” the Jones Library to which she refers had been junked up still, in 1999, with construction debris left from the 1993 addition. Even a few minutes’ walk through the Kinsey Garden that she and some 60 volunteers created there refreshed the spirits of countless Amherst residents and visitors over the years when she was permitted to oversee it.
The Library Director and Trustees could certainly have thanked Carol for this extraordinary gift. As far as I know, they never have.
Carol and all,
This a tragedy in so many ways: on the ground and symbolically, of course, but it marks an alarming shift in the community spirit of Amherst, echoed in the devolution of Town Meeting, and so much more….
(I agree with Shel that sharing your thoughts with a broader readership in the Gazette and Bulletin is important — it would be even more interesting if their editors insist you’ve “been heard there” before — please keep up the “peaceful fight”!)