In Full Bloom

Behrens-Eaton House Unveils Restored Victorian Garden…

The Behrens-Eaton House Museum has long served as a carefully curated celebration of Redding’s olden days and, in keeping with the late Hon. Richard B. Eaton’s wishes, the Victorian era. Its weed-choked back yard? Not so much.

That’s now all in the past. The back yard, fittingly, is home to a Victorian garden that is, well, a museum piece in its own right.

The idea for a garden began to germinate after a four-year project to restore a pair of 100-year-old cottages behind the museum, says Mike Dahl, one of three trustees appointed to oversee the museum and its grounds.

Built in 1925 by the Bass sisters (members of a prominent Shasta County family), the cottages had fallen into disrepair. But to Dahl and fellow trustee Denny Mills, they still had plenty of intrinsic value. “Denny and I are both past presidents of the Shasta Historical Society; the thought of tearing them down was a non-starter. We’re preserving the history of the neighborhood,” Dahl says. “They were built during the Roaring Twenties and offered a contrast to the (1895-vintage) Victorian home. Plus, those bungalows were there when Judge Eaton was a kid.”

One cottage serves as the offices for the Eaton Gift, the official name of the nonprofit organization that operates the museum. The second cottage provides secure, climate-controlled storage for artifacts that rotate in and out of the museum.

For the garden installation, museum staffers enlisted docents, volunteers, neighbors, engineers and landscape architects to help with the design. Dahl says key contributors included Danielle Arendt with design.of.thought landscaping; Semingson Architecture & Engineering; Sharrah Dunlap Sawyer; and McEntire Landscaping.

A peaceful Victorian fountain surrounded by benches centers the garden and a symmetrical pattern of stamped concrete walkways and smaller pathways of decomposed granite guide visitors through a mix of shrubs, herbs, plants, trees and vines.

“It’s just a very special project,” says Hannah Sweeney, a lead horticulturist with McEntire Landscaping who assisted with the garden design and installation and now takes care of weekly maintenance. “The fountain really adds to it. It was really fun to install. There are so many birds and pollinators that come to the garden.”

Sweeney and Alexis Easley, the lead designer with McEntire Landscaping, selected a variety of drought-tolerant plants and shrubs, including the long-blooming catmint, “which is something you don’t see often. It grows really fast. We installed it in late September and to have it explode like it has has been fun to watch,” Sweeney says.

The garden’s plants also were chosen with the goal of having something in bloom year-round, Dahl says. That colorful feature came into play in May when the Victorian garden was the centerpiece of the annual AAUW Redding Branch garden tour.

In addition to beautifying the museum grounds, the Eaton Gift Board of Governors used the garden project as a springboard to spruce up the neighborhood as well, adopting the city-owned strips adjoining the sidewalks on Chestnut and Butte streets, installing irrigation systems and planting roses and other flowers.

“We wanted the garden to enhance the neighborhood and the museum experience,” Dahl says. Neighbors and workers on break from the neighboring law offices and the Shasta County Administration Center on West Street frequently comment on the improvements. •

Behrens-Eaton House Museum
www.eatonhousemuseum.org
1520 West St., Redding
(530) 241-3455
Hours: 10 am to 4 pm Tuesday and Wednesday,
1 to 4 pm Saturday; private and school tours available by appointment