‘Discovering New England Stone Walls’ draws large crowd

Kevin Gardner, of Hopkinton, N.H., spoke to a crowd of 140 people at the Nolin-Murray Center in Springfield on Tuesday, April 7.

While simultaneously constructing a miniature stone wall, he discussed how and why New England’s stone walls were built, how their styles emerged and changed over time and their significance to the famous New England landscape. One interesting fact is that the length of stone walls combined (240,000 miles) could circle the globe at least 10 times.

Like a lot of independent rural Yankees, he has been a jack of many trades – a builder, logger, writer, teacher, radio voice, and even an actor and director. For more than 40 years, he has been a stone wall builder in a family business widely known for traditional New England stonework, particularly the historic restoration of antique structures.

In 2001, Gardner published The Granite Kiss: Traditions and Techniques of Building New England Stone Walls. His second book, Stone Building: How To Make New England Style Walls and Other Structures the Old Way, was published in 2017. He has also published poetry, songs, and essays, including “Land of Stone,” an examination of several historic sites in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire, in the 2006 anthology Where the Mountain Stands Alone.

The talk was co-sponsored by the Springfield Garden Club and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, a continuing education program with the University of Vermont. Gardner was introduced by Marita Johnson, OLLI facilitator and Springfield Garden Club Golden Trowel member; she has served as the facilitator for OLLI programs since the beginning of the 22-year partnership.

Each year the Springfield Garden Club co-sponsors a program related to gardening, landscaping, the environment or conservation. In addition to the garden club members volunteering their time to beautify the town with plantings, one of the club’s other main missions is to share educational information with the community.

The program was recorded by SAPA TV and should be available on its website soon. For more information on the Springfield Garden Club, visit its website or Facebook page. More information on OLLI’s programs in Springfield can be found here.