Gaiety Hollow

Elizabeth Lord and Edith Schryver practiced landscape architecture together in Salem, Oregon, from 1929 to the 1969. Their firm was the first office of professional women landscape architects on the West Coast.

Background

Elizabeth Lord was born in Salem, Oregon in 1887, and Edith Schryver in Kingston, New York, in 1901. They met as students in 1927 on a Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture trip to Europe to study gardens. Their residential work was influenced by the work of other women designers, particularly Gertrude Jekyll, Ellen Shipman, and Louise Beebe Wilder.

Gaiety Hollow, their personal home and studio, was completed in 1932 and occupies a nearly square, one-third-acre lot approximately one mile southwest of the Oregon State Capitol building and across the street from Bush’s Pasture Park. Designed in collaboration with architect Clarence Smith, the L-shaped brick-and-wood Colonial Revival home and formal garden are integrated through a series of axes and planned vistas, a hallmark of Lord & Schryver’s designs.

In addition to their residential work, the two consulted for Salem's Park Commission, Tree Commission, Art Association, and the Oregon Roadside Council and Capitol Commission. Each also wrote for the Oregonian and actively promoted their firm on the radio and by traveling on the lecture circuit.

Lord & Schryver designed more than 200 gardens in the Pacific Northwest over a span of more than 40 years – mostly residential, but also including several civic and institutional settings. Commissions came from recommendations passed along among a network of friends and through the Portland Garden Club. The firm’s designs often featured formal axes with a variety of focal points punctuated by sculptures delineated by boxwood, soft arches formed by flowering trees, or even an ethereal bank of heather. They were known for creating elegant garden rooms that could be used for entertaining or for more private, quiet use.

The Gaiety Hollow garden, located on the north and west sides of the property, comprises six distinct garden rooms (Entry Garden, Evergreen Garden, North Lawn, Drying Garden, Parterre Garden, and West Allée) delineated by boxwood hedges, allées, and other plantings, and connected by brick pathways. Plant varieties are clustered to achieve a range of sizes, textures, and colors throughout the year. A large wooden pergola planted with a combination of grape vines, roses, and clematis serves as the focal point at the end of an axis that extends from the back porch across the North Lawn. A circular concrete fountain with a cherub statue stands at the center of the Evergreen Garden and serves as another focal point between the Entry Garden, North Lawn, and pergola, and can be viewed through the living room window.

After Shryver died in 1984, the property passed to a second owner; the Lord and Shryver Conservancy had a lease option, and following a two-year capital campaign became its third owners, restoring and rehabilitating the garden and opening it to the public. Gaiety Hollow was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2014 because of its garden and is located within the Gaiety Hill/Bush’s Pasture Park Historic District, listed in 1986.