Taking care of an attractive ornamental garden for even a single year requires time, talent, money, attention to detail and dedication. Now imagine tending a garden for a century – a full 100 years of pulling weeds, deadheading flowers, pruning trees and shrubs, fighting pests and disease, removing plants that no longer work and replacing them with ones that you hope will brighten up the space.

Of course, no one person could accomplish that task over the span of a century, but a dedicated group of people – mostly women in this case – have done so for the garden at the historic Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland. And they just held a celebration of that milestone.

The Longfellow Garden Club was formed 100 years ago to create, and in subsequent years to maintain, the garden at the 489 Congress St. house. To mark their 100th year, the club installed a sundial in the garden and held a low-key but moving celebration in mid-July.

Anne Longfellow Pierce left the building to Maine Historical Society when she died in 1901. She and her brother, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had grown up there. In 1924, Portlander Pearl Davis Wing, horrified by the neglected state of the gardens, reached out to her socialite friends to do something to improve the grounds. Her efforts led to the Longfellow Garden Club, which eventually became a significant part of the historic house. (And lest you think her interests were limited to gardens, Wing was the first woman in Portland to make an outdoor public speech in favor of women’s suffrage, according to the Center for Maine History.)

“The Longfellow House ain’t the Longfellow House without the Longfellow Garden,” Maine Historical Society President Steve Bromage said at the celebration marking the 100th anniversary. About 60 people attended the event.

The gardens outside the Wadsworth-Longfellow House were designed 100 years ago. The Longfellow Garden Club has been responsible for maintaining them ever since. Photo courtesy of Maine Historical Society

The first thing the Longfellow Garden Club did was hire Myron Lamb, a landscape architect, who designed a Colonial Revival-style garden on the property behind the house. He worked at the gardens for 37 years, his salary paid by the garden club. A Colonial Revival garden (I had to look it up) typically has straight paths and is enclosed by walls. It features many perennial plants and shrubs, some of which produce fruits or vegetables.

In the Longfellow Garden, the “walls” are formed by newer buildings that now occupy what was Longfellow property when Henry Longfellow lived there. The garden has a crabapple tree and plenty of flowering bushes, but no other fruit trees.

When the Longfellows lived at the property, at was still a relatively rural site, with ornamental plants and vegetables. The garden was much wider then, too, and went all the way back to Cumberland Avenue. Today, it’s about 25 feet wide and slightly more than 100 feet long. The garden is maintained by the club, which has almost 50 members, with some help from a hired landscape gardener.

The garden has not always been the welcoming oasis in busy downtown Portland that it is now. Until 1980, only Longfellow House ticket holders were allowed to visit, or people accompanied by a member of Longfellow Garden Club. But that year, the club persuaded the historical society to open the garden to the public.

I’m glad. As a garden lover who worked in downtown Portland for 37 years, the Longfellow Garden was my solution to stress, be it from difficulty writing a story, disagreements with supervisors or, more rarely, arguments with writers whose stories I was editing. As little as 10 minutes sitting in the garden could make me feel better. Looking at plants is a lot more relaxing than looking at computer screens or, in the early days, a blank piece of paper in the typewriter.

The garden at the Wadsworth-Longfellow House, a work in process in April, 2008. The garden was dismantled, then re-planted for when the Maine Historical Society library was renovated and expanded. Doug Jones/staff photographer

One interesting bit of history that I had forgotten until it was brought up at the 100th anniversary celebration: The entire Longfellow Garden had to be dismantled in 2007 when the Maine Historical Society library was renovated and expanded. At the time, there was one bush, a lilac, that was known to be growing in the garden when Anne Longfellow Pierce, and possibly Henry, lived at the property. That lilac was dug up, tended to by O’Donal’s Nursery in Gorham during the building project, and successfully replanted in the garden when the library construction was complete. It still thrives there today.

Now, that’s historic.

Tom Atwell is a freelance writer gardening in Cape Elizabeth. He can be contacted at: tomatwell@me.com.