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Arts & Entertainment

From the Stage to the Garden

Seekonk resident Andrew Grossman went from professional dancer to award-winning Landscape Designer.

The parallels between dance choreography and garden design are many. Just ask professional dancer turned award-winning landscape designer Andrew Grossman.

“With both choreography and design you’re arranging things in space. It’s the process of envisioning something, creating something out of nothing," Grossman says. “Also, dancers are hard to deal with and plants are hard to deal with.”

Grossman was born in Baltimore and grew up on the East Side of Providence. For a short time when he was six, he and his family lived in a small town in Cheshire, England in a “little pink cottage” on the property of a manor house. Grossman recalls wandering through the property’s extensive gardens and traveling through the English countryside, two things that perhaps speak to his later career choice.

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As a teen Grossman became interested in dance and later attended college in Bennington, Vermont, where he double-majored in Botanical Science and Modern Dance. After college, Grossman spent eight years working as a professional dancer for small companies in London, Boston and New York City. 

“I did enjoy it, but dancing is a hard life,” Grossman remembers. “Also, I’m not really a city person and you really need to live in the city to do that work.”

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Throughout his time as a dancer Grossman helped support himself with small landscaping jobs on the side. Though he eventually received his master’s degree in choreography, he realized his heart was not on the stage, but rather in the garden. 

“I finished my senior concert for my master's and I walked off the stage and said ‘You know, I don’t really want to do this. I’m going to open a landscape design company.’”

Since 1993 Grossman has worked with clients all over New England in both rural and urban settings using, according to his website, “a wide range of design elements including; perennial and flowering shrub borders, patios and walkways,water gardens, fencing, arbors, and pergolas, outdoor fireplaces, swimming pools, rock gardens, and herb and vegetable gardens.” His portfolio as a landscape designer has been featured in Garden Design, Country Living Gardener and Country Garden magazines. Fine Gardening magazine is scheduled for a visit in a few weeks. 

As far as tips for gardeners go, Grossman says soil preparation is the most important thing for a successful garden. According to him most garden plants do well in soil that’s high in organic matter. He uses both horse manure and a layer of mulched leaves while avoiding chemical fertilizer.  Grossman says people whose homes have been built in the last thirty years should pay particular attention to their soil as, according to him, builders often take rich topsoil away to sell and replace it with lesser soil.

As for planting, Grossman emphasizes keeping it simple by using a limited amount of plant varieties in larger quantities.

“One hydrangea bush is one hydrangea bush. Ten hydrangeas in a group is a show.”

Though Grossman’s property in Seekonk is only one acre, it feels much larger as it borders the Edna Martin Wildlife Refuge and the Runnins River.  He says he was not the highest bidder on the property when it was for sale, but feels the former owners, the Seekonk Land Trust, knew he would be a steward to the land. And he is. He regularly stops people from camping out or driving ATVs and cars through the refuge.

Grossman’s Seekonk gardens will be featured in this year’s national Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program on June 18.  For folks not able to make the date, his web site has a slideshow of the property and he also keeps a blog of his progress working in his own and clients’ gardens.

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