Garden Design / March 2006

letter from new orleans
The Quiet After the Storm

By Charles Birnbaum

With Hurricane Katrina's destruction estimated at $75 billion, along with an uncountable toll 0f human suffering and displacement most reports have justifiably focused on those hit the hardest. As I visited Louisiana this past winter, I was struck by the hurricane’s impact on so many people and places under the radar who also need our support. In my role as founder of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, I can’t help but worry about New Orleans’ magnificent historic gardens and the people who depend on them for their livelihood as well as inspiration.

You may have already read about the monumental devastation and flooding at New Orleans’ famed City Park and the Ellen Biddle Shipman designed master-work Longue Vue, both of which received direct bits. But what about other places in the region? Is it politically incorrect to draw attention to these landmarks, trapped in the financial disaster facing the tourism economy that is unfolding throughout the Gulf Coast region?

What about such famed plantations as Laura, Oak Alley and San Francisco, three of the six historic properties on Great River Road Plantation Parade (www.plantationparade.com)? This upbeat and evocative Web site notes, “For centuries, the subtropical air was filled with the sweet smells of sugarcane, as wagons rumbled from the fields to the docks?" In December what I sensed was a feeling of dormancy and isolation in the air.

For Sand Marmillion, the proprietress and caretaker of the Creole plantation Laura, the future for this 14-acre historic homestead is uncertain. Visitation to Laura today is just a trickle, three or four folks a day instead of three or four hundred. Marmillion says that after Katrina she had to let her four gardeners go. “It was heart-breaking. When you work with someone to develop a living project, you bond, you plant your vegetables and harvest them together." Where there was once a staff of 33 today they rely on the helping hands of volunteers.

At Oak Alley, one of the region’s most iconic plantations, the state of affairs is magnified. At this National Historic Landmark property, celebrated for its freestanding colonnade of 28 colossal Done columns as well as its majestic double row of giant live oak trees, the only trace now of Katrina is a great hush and a sense of loneliness. Before the hurricane, Oak Alley averaged 736 visitors day. Post-Katrina, the average is 27, and the staff has been reduced from 75 to 21. Even with operating expenses kept to a bare minimum, Oak Alley will require more than $1 million in financial assistance to stay open while awaiting the return of the tourists.

These cultural landscapes are all intact and open, hut how will they get the visitors that have been supporting them? Zeb Mayhew Jr., administrative director of the Oak Alley Foundation, noted, “It is an amazing situation to find yourself in, but we will have to endure the grieving period. There is nothing that anyone can do—only time can make this better.”

So while the dust settles along the muddy Mississippi, an unfamiliar silence has replaced the normal hustle
and bustle. The character-defining ancient live oaks stand as mute witnesses to an economic chill that has engulfed these beloved cultural landscapes. So what can we do?

When that most aromatic of Louisiana spring perfumes—equal parts rain and soil—rises in the air, let us, too, take to the skies and make a pilgrimage to these special places so that they may seduce and inspire another generation of garden lovers.

Charles Birnbaum is founder of the Cultural Landscape Foundation.