When Emil Rinderspacher was planning to build his home on old farmland, he was presented with a blank canvas to design a new garden. At the time a perennial gardener, he attended a lecture at Iowa State University from a landscape architect. On a trip to Reno, Nevada, for the national bowling tournament, he sketched out his design on a dinner place mat.
This is his 30th summer in the house, which sits off Highway 1 between Iowa City and Solon. He’s remained pretty faithful to that first outline, though there is always something new coming in.
“Who made the rule that you have to know where you're going to put a plant before you buy it?” Rinderspacher said, paraphrasing a philosophy from plantsman Tony Avent.
He has planted hundreds of perennials, 250 trees and shrubs, and 10,000 bulbs.
“It's kind of a wide variety, and I've designed it so that it blooms early spring, until it frosts, so there's something in bloom,” he said.
Large windows behind him frame the picturesque views of his backyard oasis, as Rinderspacher sits at the dining table — which also functions as an informal office space where he works on various commitments, like the final report from the Master Gardener plant sale.
When he and his brother, Ed Rinderspacher, were growing up, their father had a garden with hundreds of roses. Later, their father got into vegetables, giving away tomatoes and pumpkins to his small-town community. Both of the brothers inherited the love for working in nature, and the two of them help each other with their respective gardens, sharing ideas and plants alike.
“For me, the garden is never done, it's just never done,” he said. “And you always are learning. I learned from other gardeners. I love to visit other gardens, pick people's brains, it’s just a lot of fun for me.”
When he was working full time, Rinderspacher would put on a headlamp after dinner to work in the garden for as long as he could. These days he’s been preparing for several garden tours to come through his property, so he and his helpers have been putting in six hours of work a day to get it ready.
Over the year he has enlisted the help of grandchildren and local high school or college students to help him manage this backyard ecosystem. One of his portages still works in the dirt as a forensic anthropologist. Another applied his horticulture knowledge to growing a particular cash crop.
“He said, ‘You'll never guess where I am.’ I'm like, ‘Where?’ He said, ‘I am the head botanist for cannabis-growing operation in Maine.’ I’m like, ‘What? Jack?’ He said, ‘Yes, you taught me well.’”
“It's very calming to me. And I just like to look at plants and how they grow,” Rinderspacher said. “And the smells, like right now the some of the roses, the really fragrant sharp roses are blooming. It's just intoxicating to me.”
For those just getting started in their garden, Rinderspacher said it’s all experimental.
“Visit other gardens, talk to people and do what you'd like, not what you think you should do,” he said.
You can visit his garden, and his brother’s garden in West Branch, on the Open Garden’s Weekend self-guided tour, organized by Project Green June 28-29.
