Goddess Flora Moves on to New Plot

Philipstown gardener has ‘10 green fingers’

What happens to a legendary garden when the legendary gardener who loved it for six decades moves away?

That’s the question on the minds of the Highlands gardening community as Miriam Wagner leaves her beloved home on Old Albany Post Road in Philipstown, where she cultivated a 1-acre plot that is listed in the Archive of American Gardens of the Smithsonian Institution.

“‘The Goddess Flora’ — that’s what I call Miriam,” said Matthew Weigman, honorary president of the Philipstown Garden Club. “Talk about green thumbs. She has 10 green fingers.”

Since the early 1960s, when Miriam and her husband, Eric, moved into the renovated 19th-century barn, those green fingers have cultivated a meandering country garden surrounded by a 7-foot-high fence to keep out the deer.

Wagner has grown hundreds of plants, shrubs, trees and flowers, including hydrangea, forsythia, Petasites, joe-pye weed, daylilies, grapevines, a dogwood tree, a lady apple tree, fruiting and ornamental quince, spirea, azaleas and flowering lettuce.

“I’m greedy for beautiful things,” said Wagner, 87, who has a degree in art history from Barnard. During her studies, she especially liked artists who filled their paintings with flowers. “Renaissance artists were good at putting Madonna and child with lovely blooming plants,” she says.

When the Philipstown Garden Club applied for the Smithsonian listing, Wagner suggested the garden be named Linnevold, her maiden name, but it’s never been called that outside of the application.

In the late spring and early summer, the stars of her garden are the antique roses with names such as Belle de Crecy, Duchesse de Montebello, Maiden’s Blush and Madame Plantier.

To celebrate those roses, every June for 40 years Wagner invited as many as 60 friends and plant lovers to a garden party to celebrate “Rose Day.” They would sip May wine and eat pound cake with butter frosting blended with rose water and topped with rose petals, which are “perfectly healthy to eat provided you don’t spray anything on your roses,” Wagner said. “I never use sprays, ever.”

This summer, for the first time in recent memory, there was no Rose Day celebration. Eric Wagner died three years ago, and late last year, Miriam decided to move to The Fellowship Community in Chestnut Ridge.

“It is hard, but I didn’t want to live here alone anymore,” said Wagner, speaking last weekend at her estate sale, where she sold, among other items, many of her gardening books. “This is me trying to make a good place for me to be healthy.”

While moving was necessary, her family didn’t relish the possibility of having a new owner bulldoze the old house, greenhouse and garden. “I wanted it to be in gardening hands,” she said.

As it happens, the property was purchased by the family of a Garrison resident and contractor, Javier Flores (yes, flores translates as flowers in Spanish), who had done work on the house over the years and expressed interest in buying it if the opportunity arose.  

Flores’ wife, Janeth Martinez, said their family plans to move in after completing renovations in a few months. “The garden will stay because my daughter loves to garden,” said Martinez, whose two children attend the Garrison School. 

Martinez and her mother, who lives near Corpus Christi, Texas, have long grown vegetables, including zucchini, tomatoes, cilantro, pumpkins, parsley and butternut squash. Martinez plans to bring along her five chickens once her husband builds a coop, a necessity since she’s had problems with bobcats.

She said she is not intimidated by the wide variety of plants to maintain. “I can learn,” she said. “Everything is online. I can take a photo of the plant and read about it.” Of course, she hopes to rely on Wagner for guidance, as well. 

Wagner’s advice is simple. “Love the garden,” she said. “Make it grow as well as you can.” The family knows that the garden will change. “Gardens are always evolving,” said her daughter, Liz Wagner, an educator with the Five Rivers Environmental Education Center in Delmar who grew up making forts in a giant forsythia bush.

Miriam Wagner’s life has also evolved. She is cultivating friendships at her new home while plying her old skills. “There’s a lovely courtyard garden here with shrubs and a crabapple tree,” she said. “I’m doing some watering and some weeding.”