★A COUPLE’S SOIRÉE-FRIENDLY

GARDEN STEALS THE SHOW

Chris Andersen and Eric Butler’s English-

style garden plays host to numerous social
gatherings, including movie nights for friends and
neighborhood kids. “The Performing Arts Center,”
as Andersen grandly calls the garden cottage, is
modeled after a house he saw in Norway.

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 summer
BLOCKBUSTER
BY ALYSSA FORD
PHOTOS BY MAKI STRUNC PHOTOGRAPY

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 The view from Chris Andersen’s second-story sun porch is so precise it’s almost
puzzling—like a houseplant so vivid and glossy you have to touch it to make sure
it’s real. Square and rectangular bluestone pavers line up methodically under
the window. A crushed granite walkway surrounds a perfectly centered gurgling
fountain, a perfect sphere in a perfect circle. Farther out, squares of Kentucky
bluegrass play hopscotch with more bluestone pavers, a living checkerboard
artfully dotted with oversized jacks. h

This exacting view is no accident. Andersen spent three
years gazing out this second-story window, planning a
crisp, geometric layout that’s broken up on occasion by
wily plant limbs and carefree leaves. Considering its me-
ticulous look, it’s hard to imagine the whole thing started
on a lark. Three years ago, when the house next door went
up for sale, Andersen and his partner, Eric Butler, discov-
ered that the land was once a garden attached to their
1930 English Tudor. The south Minneapolis property had
been split into two separate lots in 1969.
It was a big and expensive decision to buy and demolish
a house to reclaim their property’s original garden, but “the
temptation was almost too great to resist,” says Andersen.
For Andersen, the garden’s caretaker and planner, the
landscape is primarily about great design and satisfying
work in the dirt. For Butler—who freely admits to doing
none of the grunt work—the garden is a first-class space
for hosting soirées. (He also loves to catch rays in the
sunken garden, though Andersen had to be persuaded to
let his partner lounge around on the perfect grass.)
The garden is designed in the English style with six
rooms (three indoor, three outdoor): the hideaway
circle garden with the fountain, the rectangular sunken
garden two steps down, the upper garden with the
checkerboard motif, the terraces, a screened porch, and
a sun porch. “The nice thing is that you can’t take it in
all in one gaze. You have to really explore it to see it,”
Andersen says.
During parties, including a 150-guest fundraiser for Lu-
theran World Relief last summer, visitors meander through
the “rooms” and discover the garden’s many surprises,
including the spherical fountain, the sculpture of cubes
by New Mexico artist Frank Morbillo, and the fragrant
magnolias under-planted with boxwood spheres.
At such gatherings, it’s not uncommon to see the chil-
dren of friends run free-form across the grass-and-stone
checkerboard, and then plop down on the stone steps
between big planters of coppery-barked amur choke-
cherry agapanthus. There, they watch movies projected
onto a Norwegian-style pavilion, modeled after a simple
Scandinavian country building, that Andersen grandly calls
the “Performing Arts Center.”
Even strangers have been treated to sublime social
gatherings here. On more than one occasion, the couple
has noticed passersby trying to sneak a peek at the garden.
They love it when that happens, and always run outside to
greet the curious and show them around.
The garden’s unusual tone makes it particularly com-
pelling. Instead of filling the space with bright flowers,
Andersen insisted on a mellow, restrained palette—all

THIS PAGE Guests linger in the sunken garden, near

planters of spiky agapanthus. OPPOSITE PAGE The
most obvious melding of garden and geometry is the
checkerboard dotted with oversized jacks. “I wanted to
find a way to move the stone into grass and the grass
into stone,” says Andersen.

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 gray-greens, blue-greens, whites, gray-blues, and soft dabs
of violet. Andersen—who was trained as an architect, and
is now the executive director of the Lutheran Community
Foundation—also zeroed in on shape. With Scott Endres
and Dean Engelmann, owners of Tangletown Gardens in
Minneapolis, Andersen selected plants that would offer the
most geometric and architectural punch with a design of
spheres and cubes. Thorned hawthornes, ‘Dakota Pinnacle’
birch trees, ‘Medora’ junipers, and little-leaf lindens form a
stiff horizontal backbone. The three designers accented the
crisp, angular foundation with contrasting organic shapes
such as flowering ‘Red Jewel’ crabapples and airy ‘Karl
Foerster’ grasses.
“With his background in architecture, he knew about all
the principles of design—shape, scale, and form—but we
were able to help him soften the edges of the design and
come up with simple but very pleasing plant combinations
that we knew were very Chris Andersen-like,” says Endres.
“There are very few accidents in my garden,” adds An-
dersen. The surprising effect of such a controlled space
is that it is remarkably versatile. Party guests can roam in
the garden rooms and feel quite at ease—this is a garden
that functions like a great room but happens to be out-
“the nice thing is that you
can’t take it in all in one gaze.
You have to really explore it to see it.”
mh0608p077 77
OPPOSITE PAGE, CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT Butler
(in foreground) and friends enjoy a garden that never
loses its sense of humor. Butler and Andersen prep
for the evening’s entertainment. Andersen schemed
and dreamed his garden-to-be from this second-story
window. THIS PAGE The chandelier-bedecked screened
porch and second-story sun porch allow the sights and
sounds of the garden into the house.
side. But when the guests drive away and empty glasses
are piled up in the kitchen, the garden readily takes on
its alter ego: private sanctuary. Andersen and Butler go
to their favorite spot: a little bench on the movie lawn
where they can look back at the lights of the house. In
the mornings, they quietly sip coffee on the back patio
in matching rocking chairs. It’s during those moments
that Butler says he understands what it means to live a
truly outdoor lifestyle. He notices the sunlight dappling
through the trees, and he picks up on subtle sounds that
might be muted in another garden. “I adore the sound of
wind through a tree,” he says. “And Chris has spoiled me
with that in our garden.”
Alyssa Ford is an associate editor at Midwest Home.
For more information on featured products and suppliers, see page 198.
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