Like many Newtown parents, Donna Kern Ball used to take her son and his friends to visit the hidden garden within The Pleasance, the property at 1 Main Street established by The Bee Publishing Company in 1997.

Ball is now being thanked by Helen and Scudder Smith for months of work she dedicated to bringing a special set of sculpture and the garden itself back to life. After being outdoors for more than a dozen harsh New England winters, the sculptures needed repairs.

That’s when Ball entered the picture, according to Helen Smith.

“We knew the Bunny Garden was in need of refurbishing, but hadn’t taken the time to search for avenues to follow to that end,” Mrs Smith said. “And then came an e-mail from someone we had never had the pleasure of meeting.”

Anyone who has been to The Pleasance Bunny Garden in recent months — especially if they were at the park some time last year — cannot help but notice the bright colors and life that have returned to the six works of art and one building within that special place.

The landmark feature when many people think of The Pleasance is a gazebo in the main part of the property on the western corner of Main Street and Sugar Street. The gazebo offers a place to enjoy lunch, gather for small meetings, or have photographs taken.

Pathways from the gazebo take visitors through a manicured garden; past sculptures that include a huge turtle, an equally oversize rooster, and a life-size man with a collection of five life-size dogs of myriad breeds; and past an antique cast iron fountain.

A second area, on the west side of the property, features another meandering stone path and three benches, rhododendrons, holly bushes, and a bed of annuals and perennials, a flagpole, and The Bunny Garden, a children’s garden complete with sculptures of five rabbits and one farmer.

The Bunny Garden and its inhabitants are based on the characters imagined by Beatrix Potter for her very classic children’s book The Tale of Peter Rabbit. A scene from the tale of a mischievous Peter Rabbit was brought to life in the children’s area within The Pleasance when Helen and Scudder Smith commissioned Ken Memoli to create its inhabitants.

A tool shed along the northern edge of The Pleasance has a fenced-in garden to its south, where a sculpture very much resembling Mr McGregor can be found. The farmer is on his knees, presumably planting young cabbages like his literary counterpart.

The farmer is looking to his right, where he has spotted a very naughty Peter Rabbit, who has just pulled up three beautiful carrots.

To the west of this scene, a second outbuilding was also installed years ago. This is the Bunny House, and it is large enough for a few small children — or one very agile adult — to fit into. A Dutch door welcomes children into the play space, which holds a few child-size pieces of furniture, and dolls and toys that are swapped out once they become weathered.

Mother Rabbit stands outside the house, to the right of the door. One of her children — Flopsy, Mopsy or Cottontail — is to the left of the door. The other two young rabbits can be found along nearby pathways.

The four figures are gazing toward the activity in the farmer’s nearby fenced-in garden. The bunnies and farmer were resin-fortified, cast cement statues, according to a July 2007 Newtown Bee feature announcing their arrival and inviting families to find them.

Research, Then Work

Ball, an award-winning artist, went to work after connecting with the Smiths and discussing what would be done at their property. She took on the project, she told The Newtown Bee in October, as a labor of love and a COVID project.

“Before I touched anything, I researched the sculpture,” Ball said earlier this month. The first thing she did was find out everything she could about the artist Ken Memoli.

“I really admire Mr Memoli’s masterful work,” she said. “His compositions, proportions, and details are perfect, right down to Peter’s one shoe.”

In her tale, Potter describes Peter as being “most dreadfully frightened” after being discovered by Mr McGregor that he begins running around the garden. Forgetting his way back to the garden gate, Peter loses one of his shoes among cabbage plants, and another among potatoes.

Memoli’s creation has Peter standing stock still, ears straight up, his left shoe already missing. The Bunny Garden was formally opened in AUgust 2007. Memoli returned at least once, the following summer, to check on and do light repairs to the already-adored sculptures.

“You can tell he was a sculptor who really knew what he was doing,” Ball said of Memoli. Ball learned that the artist — a resident of Lime Rock when his work was commissioned for The Pleasance — was once a Sandy Hook resident, and created various animals for garden sculpture for Campania International, and was known for a series of small Santa Claus figurines he did for United Design.

Memoli died, she said, in September 2020.

The Bunny Garden sculptures deserved as much respect as their creator, Ball said. “You have to be careful and respectful. You can’t just scrape these and then slap Rust-Oleum on them.”

Ball learned from fellow artists, including a few painters, what to use that would work without damaging the art. By May 2021, she said, she and an art buddy named Bill moved the four bunny sculptures from 1 Main Street to Ball’s home studio. There, they carefully removed old debris and paint before repainting with an outdoor all-surface enamel.

“For Mrs Rabbit and the gardener, we worked on-site,” Ball said. “They’re really heavy, so we left them in place and worked on them en plein air.”

Clean And Safe

In recent months, Ball has taken it upon herself to continue checking on The Bunny Garden. She cleans out leaves and other small items left behind in the house, making it as clean as possible for its next visitors.

“The main thing you want is for a parent to go in and feel it’s clean, and that it’s safe to play in there,” she said.

Ball has removed some old shelves from within the house, and installed in their place a play-size refrigerator. Toy eggs and plastic garden vegetables fill the refrigerator.

She has added dolls to the collection — woodland creatures, primarily, including a raccoon, squirrel, chipmunk and fox — and made sure at least one copy of Beatrix Potter’s book can also be found by young visitors. A child-size chair was recently reupholstered, she said, by Red Baron.

“It’s nice, if someone wants to sit in here and read, it’s comfortable and clean again,” said Ball, who has also created and filled new window boxes for the exterior of the house.

Helen Smith calls the work done by Donna Ball “a gift, for the town of Newtown. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

“She did so much work … that e-mail presented itself as the most gracious gift for all of the Newtown children and area visitors,” Smith said. “This enormous gift, which took many painstaking hours over the following couple of years, was presented from the goodness of her heart, all expenses borne of her purse.

“Donna didn’t stop with restoring the figures,” Smith noted. “She took it upon herself to shine up their house as well.

“Our overflowing hearts with insufficient thanks go to you, Donna,” she continued. “We could never repay you for your generosity to us and especially to Newtown.”

During a recent visit to The Bunny Garden, Ball was equally complimentary to Helen Smith, who reportedly spent two years designing and mapping the winding paths and placement of the 6- by 8-foot Victorian cottage that serves as the Bunny House, the potting shed, gardens, and characters that call the thicket home.

“She did a great job conceiving this, and then creating this wonderful little plot of land,” she said. “How many towns have something like this? It’s so Newtown.”

Ball and her son were at The Pleasance for a quick work session recently, she said. They witnessed a young family playing within the Bunny Garden.

“It was wonderful, and perfect,” she said, smiling broadly.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.