The future of the West End Neighbors Garden Tour is uncertain. They plan to hold a garage sale in the fall, then sell their original home - a Victorian stick-style house with gables and a steeply pitched roof with overhangs.
They also volunteer at Czech Hall, where Landsberger is the archivist and Shimer is the treasurer. These days, Landsberger and Shimer are busy settling into their new home. "The art is from all over the world," Shimer said. Other pieces include Chinese ceramics, Persian vases and paintings from Minnesota, Venice and Ukraine. A restored antique trestle table serves as the base for the vanity in a bathroom.Ī garden room features salvaged and repurposed tables using Mexican tiles as the tabletop. Inside, Shimer has curated collections of textiles, paintings and other collectibles in hallways and other gallery-like spaces. The exterior is clad in shou sugi ban siding. We put in an elevator."Īs with the garden, artful details are woven into the design of the house, which now boasts four bedrooms and four bathrooms. "It was an ambitious project and a total redesign," Landsberger said, "I kept some of the original rooflines, then built another story above it. "We wanted something where we could age in place," said Landsberger, adding that in addition to accessibility, they wanted to implement sustainable, conscious design. In more recent years, Landsberger and Shimer have turned their attention from the garden to the rental house, a 1948 one-story rambler. He also found material salvaged from the brewery to use as fencing. In the garden, Landsberger made room for an homage to his beloved neighborhood, including a bench made of materials salvaged from the old Schmidt Brewery. The garden is a sanctuary of green, encompassing more than 100 trees, shrubs and ground covers, including rare varieties such as a star-shaped Armandii Snowdrift Clematis (the earliest bloom of the year), a wispy Chinese flowering chestnut and a large, magnolia-like calycanthus. Known as the Leech Street Garden, the garden is Zen-inspired, with an 18-foot-wide red Japanese gate, called a torii, traditionally used to mark the entrance from the ordinary to the sacred space in a Shinto shrine. During that time, Landsberger, a self-taught gardener, worked on the yard, creating an extensive landscape worthy of a garden tour stop. For several years, he rented out the house. In 2010, Landsberger purchased the adjacent lot. Now, they're getting ready for their next chapter: moving to the house next door after just completing an extensive renovation there. Paul home Landsberger has owned for 40 years. The two met more than 25 years ago when Landsberger was walking his dog across the High Bridge and the two crossed paths.įor more than a decade, they've lived in the St. Shimer, who co-owned Gallery on Grand and Gallery on West Seventh in the early '90s, is the lead curator, while Landsberger, a retired web developer and educational/historical research writer, is the main gardener. In the home and garden he shares with partner Steve Shimer, it's clear that Landsberger lives the philosophy of connection - to nature and art. "So we thought a garden tour is something we could do to introduce people to the beauty of the neighborhood and the river and the connection to history." "In the '70s, they were going to bulldoze Irvine Park and the neighbors banded together and said no and started redoing their houses, and that has spread throughout the neighborhood. "It was basically developed because West 7th kind of had a bad rap," Landsberger said. Paul and Fort Snelling, has been a way to educate others about the neighborhood. The tour, which spotlights residential gardens between downtown St. For more than a decade, the name Joe Landsberger has been synonymous with the West End Neighbors Garden Tour.Īs founder of the fundraising tour that has drawn hundreds each year, Landsberger has been a staunch advocate of what is one of Minnesota's oldest neighborhoods.