In Memoriam: The three garden legacy of Patrick Chassé, ASLA
- Betsy Hewlett
- Jun 5
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 16
The late Patrick Chassé, who passed away in March 2025 at the age of 78, was a landscape historian, designer, preservationist, and gifted storyteller who left a lasting imprint on the Land & Garden Preserve and Mount Desert Island. The Preserve is greatly indebted to Patrick for shepherding some of the most significant landscape transitions in our history. His work at the Asticou Azalea Garden rescued a garden on the brink of demolition. At Thuya Garden, he elevated the design and sustainability of its iconic borders. At the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden, his research and design sensibilities laid a strong foundation for its future as a preserved and accessible masterpiece.
Patrick’s artistry was finely tuned by his lifelong passion for Mount Desert Island. He first visited the Island when he was ten years old. His Caribou, Maine family stayed at a seaside cabin in Hulls Cove and did “tourist things like eating lobster, going to the beach, and driving around in the Park,” according to Patrick. “It was all a sensory experience to me.” In subsequent years, he began taking extended solo trips to Mount Desert Island as a high school summer scholar and college intern at Jackson Laboratory. He experienced not only the scientific riches of Jackson Laboratory but also initiated his lifelong talent for collecting a pack of curious and intellectually engaged friends of all ages that wove his complex vision of a sense of place on the Island.
Summer residencies also launched his passion for collecting Mount Desert Island historical photos, maps, art works, and objects from estates. He volunteered to help at local Island estate sale previews where he could, with luck, take home a prized piece of art or unusual archival materials with interesting provenance and story. Patrick became a self-taught trove of local Island history and arts before completing his university studies at the University of Maine at Orono and Harvard University in biology, environmental education, botany, and landscape architecture.
Restoring the Asticou Azalea Garden
Patrick began his successful landscape design career by establishing a small office in Northeast Harbor, Landscape Design Associates. His first substantial commission came via a referral from his friend and mentor, landscape architect Robert “Bob” Whittlesey Patterson. A committee of Northeast Harbor summer residents and the private Island Foundation had assumed ownership of the Asticou Azalea garden after years of deterioration after the 1979 passing of Charles K. Savage. They tapped Patterson to re-establish the garden and develop a plan for its future as a public garden. At that time, Patterson was winding down his prolific Maine-based architecture career. While Patterson retained some design interests in the project, he recommended Patrick, a Harvard graduate student he admired, and he promised to periodically check in on him.
Patrick was brought on board to record the original garden and lead much of the restoration of Savage’s Asticou Azalea Garden. His understanding of heavy construction learned through his family’s business was a good match for overseeing an existing wayward pond dredging and stream containment effort, designing and installing a new grid of connecting garden paths, creating a new public entrance and parking lot in the spirit of Savage’s original visions, and starting to refurbish the turf and plant collection. His abiding respect for the original Savage design guided his additions, repairs, and maintenance tasks. It was a Herculean effort, accomplished on a shoestring budget by the young, talented Maine artist. Patrick’s 1982-88 landscape designs for Asticou transitioned the ailing private garden into what we appreciate today as one of America’s most revered public gardens.
Renewing Thuya Garden
Parallel to the Asticou Garden restoration was mounting deferred maintenance needs at the nearby Savage designed Thuya Garden atop Asticou Hill. When garden neighbor Denholm Jacobs was appointed by the Town of Mount Desert as Trustee of the Asticou Terraces Trust (Thuya Garden) in 1990, he engaged Patrick to initiate a planting plan and upgrade the herbaceous border gardens to include design principles and signature plants in the style of Beatrix Farrand. By 1994, the border gardens had been lifted and replanted with a 60/40 balance of perennials and annuals associated with Farrand designed gardens. Plant species and cultivars were sourced carefully, reflecting Patrick’s botanical precision and Farrand’s use of plant material. A computerized plant management database was established to record the intentional plant selection. Patrick also sketched granite step repairs and developed a “silver border plan” that contained an elaborate selection of conifers and native ground covers flanking the re-graded entrance to the upper borders.
Some of Patrick’s choices, such as the tall grasses favored by Farrand, sparked debate among local gardeners and were eventually replaced. Still, his lasting influence is clear. He brought Farrand’s principles to life at Thuya by designing alternating beds of cool and bright colors, using staggered plant heights to shape garden sight lines, and planting Farrand favorites like heliotrope, delphinium, and globe thistle in informal, undulating mounds rather than rigid rows.
Memorial for Margaret Burden:
In 1997, Patrick was commissioned to design a memorial sitting area for Thuya in memory of longtime summer resident Margaret Burden. His design included a new stone path to encircle the outer north garden edge, a raised patio and curved granite wall, adjacent plantings, and a custom wooden bench. This quiet corner joined other peaceful Thuya Garden rest stops and focal points such as the Lower and Upper Pavilion where the full sensory experience of Thuya Garden can be contemplated.
Memorial for Margaret Godfrey:
The family of the late Margaret Godfrey asked Patrick to plunge into another memorial project at Thuya in 2003. This would be his last work for the Thuya property. Working alongside Thuya Garden staff, Patrick’s plans called for removing overgrown “muffin top” yews from the face of the Lower Pavilion. In their prominent place, Patrick utilized specific plant favorites of Mrs. Godfrey, lemon scented geraniums in a large terra cotta planter and several varieties of lilies in the beds. The woodland area between the Lower Pavilion patio and Thuya Lodge was cleared of volunteer plants and weeds and the area thoughtfully replanted with native shrubs and trees according to Patrick’s schema.
Consulting at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden
This mature private family estate garden was a completely different challenge for Patrick than working with volunteer garden committees on deferred garden maintenance and neglect. During Patrick’s early career, Peggy and David Rockefeller were the loving stewards of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden. Designed by Beatrix Farrand in collaboration with Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller, Jr beginning in 1926, the garden was a design master work, hewing to both Farrand’s specifications and those of generations of Rockefeller family members.
Peggy Rockefeller encouraged Patrick to conduct research into why Farrand and John and Abby Rockefeller placed the garden where it is located on a north/south axis. This research resulted in newly surfaced details about the evolution of Farrand’s design. Patrick researched old garden catalogues found at the Rockefeller’s greenhouse to improve upon the herbaceous garden by editing the borders and tweaking the color palette. Peggy Rockefeller valued accurately maintaining and documenting the history and hardscapes of the property. She was also intent on sharing the beautiful creation with a selection of friends, scholars, and the public in a manner that would allow people on the property yet preserve the serenity and integrity of the heirloom garden. David Rockefeller cherished his favorite trees, flowers, and vistas as if they were friends and family. He visited the garden often and shared his deep-felt love of its beauty and spirit with Patrick.
Patrick spent many hours consulting with Peggy Rockefeller after first meeting her during his restoration work at the Asticou Azalea Garden. Among other details, the two consulted on repair and maintenance of a crumbling north wall, incorporating modern cultivation techniques at the garden and greenhouses, and the importance of accurate plant labeling and database maintenance. Correspondence during the years from 1984 to 1996 between Mrs. Rockefeller and Patrick includes structural repair reports for the north wall of the garden, detailed drawings and specifications for plant labels for the herbaceous borders, and scale drawings of paths and woodland areas in the garden.
Patrick wrote a visitor’s guide for the property, the first publication to include well documented information about the inception of the garden and a serious discussion of the garden’s unique spiritual nature and context. The text of his guide remains the basis for garden interpretive materials that are still in use.
When Peggy Rockefeller died in 1996, she and Patrick were discussing an updated plan for Abby Garden public visitation and several alternative proposals for an intern and horticultural training program at the garden and greenhouses. Patrick was devastated by the loss of his association with the Rockefeller Garden after the death of Peggy Rockefeller. Her passing brought an end to years of fulfilling collaborations that he shared with the Rockefeller family.
Embarking on his successful international landscape design career using the Preserve’s gardens as a palette was a gift of timing that provided Patrick with rich opportunities. He concurrently applied his gifts to placing solid bones and underpinning on the exquisite properties of the Preserve. We are grateful for his passion, loyalty, sensory awareness, fortunes of good timing, quirky humor, and fearless foresight. Thank you, friend.
This article was written by Betsy Hewlett, former Preserve employee who consults with the Preserve on archival material management. The article is in part based on a series of oral histories with Patrick Chassé conducted by Betsy (2019-2022) and Asticou Azalea Garden Manager Mary Roper (2003).
Other resources include archival materials now available online or in person at the Land & Garden Preserve Collection, Northeast Harbor Public Library
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