Buck Foundation

For many students and their parents, the cost of a college education is simply out of reach. Scholarships from philanthropic organizations enable students to meet some or all of the high cost of university tuition and expenses. Every year, the Frank H. Buck Foundation awards all-expense paid scholarships to students in the six north-central California counties that comprised the former congressman's district. The scholarships were established in 1989 by Frank's wife, Eva Benson Buck, and are administered today by the Frank H. and Eva B. Buck Foundation.

With Eva's death in 1990, the Buck Foundation inherited the stately Victorian house where Eva and Frank had lived in Vacaville, California. Built in the 1890s, the house sits on an approximately three-quarter acre lot at the corner of Buck and Kentucky in downtown Vacaville.

According to Kathy Hazen, Executive Director of the Buck Foundation, the interior of the home was extensively renovated. "We wanted the house to look and feel as it did in the 1890s," she explains. The grounds were in need of some attention if they were to recapture their former glory. For several years, the landscaping had been left to grow naturally. As a result, shrubs had become trees and determined Bermuda grass had overwhelmed large turf areas. To help rescue and reclaim the property's gardens, the Buck Foundation hired John Gilpen with Live Oak Landscaping, a Vacaville-based landscape contractor.

From the beginning, it was the intention of the Buck Foundation to have landscaping that recalled the house's Victorian-era heyday. For inspiration and ideas, Gilpin researched Victorian homes and gardens. He also consulted a 60-year old blueprint created by a landscaper the Buck's had once hired. "The blueprint was a great find though there wasn't a lot of detail. It provided a good general layout and we took it from there."

"Taking it from there" involved replacing all of the turf areas with new sod, creating raised flower beds, pulling down several old, diseased trees, planting new vegetation, and laying tasteful brick edging around beds and walkways. Finally, Gilpin and his crew had to replace the existing sprinkler system. "There was an old galvanized steel sprinkler system that had been installed some time in the 1920s," says Gilpin. "It still worked, but it didn't work well."

A Victorian Garden with a State-of-the-Art Irrigation System

According to Gilpin, the vegetation chosen for the Buck Foundation property was representative of what one would have encountered on the property a century earlier. Among the 40 to 50 varieties of shrubs Live Oak Landscaping installed are crape-myrtle and blooming hawthorn. Tree varieties include dogwood, magnolia and evergreens. Among the landscape's highlights are a very large, ornamental wisteria estimated to be about 75 years old, and an impressive variety of large rose bushes, trees and standards. A small in-ground pool on the property provides double-duty, first as a lily pond, and as a reservoir for the irrigation system.

To provide the reliable irrigation needed to keep the variety of plant and tree life thriving, Gilpin designed and installed an irrigation system composed exclusively of Rain Bird products. Why Rain Bird? "I'm a Rain Bird Select contractor," Gilpin explains. "I knew this would be a showcase job that would receive a lot of attention, and the irrigation system would have to perform well. For these kind of jobs, I prefer Rain Bird."

For assistance selecting individual Rain Bird components, Gilpin consulted with Scott MacGregor, the Branch Manager of the Vacaville branch of Automatic Rain, a Rain Bird distributor. According to MacGregor, the irrigation system would have to perform multiple tasks. First, the system would have to keep large turf areas green all year-round. And secondly, flowering plants and shrubs would require precision watering. Rain Bird 1800 Series pop-up spray sprinklers were specifically designed for turf and shrub applications, providing an ideal solution for the system's first requirement. Rain Bird T-Bird rotors provide the close-in watering that flowering plants need to thrive. For dependable performance even under the most extreme conditions, Gilpin incorporated 36 Rain Bird Electric Remote Control PGA Series valves into the system. A sophisticated ESP-MC controller helps to ensure ideal irrigation with minimal human effort.

Soil, water pressure and weather conditions all influenced the irrigation system's final design, says Gilpin. "The soil is excellent and drains very well. And there is a reservoir on the property that provides the water source. This isn't a low water-use garden, it's more ornamental. However, we did use drips on some of the shrubs and flower beds."

Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder

The Buck Foundation's Hazen regularly receives compliments on the beauty of the gardens. On a personal level, she says they rank among the finest she's seen. "I was recently in France and visited some of the classic, ornate palaces there. I took lots of pictures to show John (Gilpin) because they were doing the same thing that we had done with the landscaping, just on a bigger scale."

While not open to the public, the Buck Foundation does participate in some chamber of commerce-sponsored historic property tours each year. The gardens are enjoyed by the Buck Foundation staff on a daily basis, and Hazen has found a favorite spot from which to admire the property's thriving vegetation. She prefers to sit on one of the benches along the walkway near the large, old wisteria. "It's absolutely fabulous," she says of the roses and ornamentals framing her view. "And we're very pleased with the irrigation system."