A Before & After of Buffalo’s bowling ball totem garden

Back when Sally Cunningham and I started our book, Buffalo Style Gardens,Create a Quirky, One-of-a-Kind Private Garden with Eye-Catching Designs, we had intended to show lots more Before and After examples of gardens. We collected many Before & After photos of gardens in the area, but not all made it in the book. Fortunately, I can show therm here.

Here are some given to us by Ellen Goldstein and Mitch Flynn – the self-titled FlynnStein Garden, which is a popular stop on Garden Walk Buffalo and Gardens Buffalo Niagara‘s Open Gardens on Thursdays and Fridays in July.

Most people know it as the garden with the bowling balls.

There’s a lot more to the garden of course, but the bowling ball totem is prominent and memorable. For Mitch and Ellen the bowling balls have significance. Their first date was a bowling night!

To see other Before & After photos of gardens, visit these posts:

• Modern, Asian Flavored garden Before & After
• A Cottage District Before & After
• Building a koi pondBefore & After
• Before & After (17 years) My own Garden
• Before & After Garden bench
• Spring DIY project Before & After
• Before & Afters (my Harry Potter garden, checkerboard garden, patio, hellstrip, and raised bed potager).

 

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  Top: April of 2003. Bottom: April of 2005.

  

  July, 2008

In addition to the bowling ball totem, Mitch and Ellen have a great collection of found and repurposed garden art. When I think of a “Buffalo-style garden” theirs is one that comes to mind quickly.