Sunday, July 20, 2014

Schedel Arboretum and Gardens



For more than 50 years this Victorian Mansion was the home of Marie and Joseph Schedel, it was built in 1888.   The house, located outside of Elmore, Ohio, was occupied by the Schedels from 1930 to 1989.  It sits on a bluff overlooking the Portage River and the property’s two adjacent lakes.  There is a total of 17 acres of land on the estate.  Pictured below is a path winding its way down toward river. In the background of the picture is the Schedel’s summer cottage called the “shack”.
The couple spent most of their time there as the mansion was too much like a museum for them. The Schedels had traveled to more than 100 countries and brought back ideas of nature and art to use in their home and gardens.  They had a special passion for the orient and far eastern cultures, as evidenced in the Japanese section of their gardens.
In the Japanese garden there is a large red Torii, as well as lanterns and pagodas, waterfalls and a small pond.  Here the cremated remains Dr. Schedel and his wife lie under a pagoda.  In the Japanese Garden, as well as throughout the grounds, are twenty different varieties of Japanese maples.  They provide a beautiful splash of color with their reddish colored leaves.  We found a small Japanese maple located in the bonsai shelter of the gardens.  The structure houses a collection of miniaturized pruned trees known as bonsai, the oldest one being 70 years of age.  The practice of expertly shaping the small trees was started in ancient China, but was perfected by the Japanese.  Some of the bonsai are pictured below.  Here we also found a dawn redwood, we had just seen a grove of those trees in another part of the gardens.  More on that tree in my next posting.

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