Bequest Will Beautify The Booth Library’s Landscaping

By Jan Howard

The Cyrenius H. Booth Library has received a bequest from the estate of the late Leslie (Fuller) Randall, a Newtown artist who died December 27, 2000, at the age of 92.

Mrs Randall’s estate bequeathed approximately $34,000 to the library, some of which will be used for landscaping, according to Director Janet Woycik. The remainder will be added to the library’s endowment fund.

“She was a devoted library patron, and was very involved in gardening,” Mrs Woycik said of Mrs Randall. Because of that, the landscaping will be developed as an educational garden, with the various plantings to be identified through an informational brochure to be completed after the landscaping project is finished next year.

Dr Philip Kotch, chairman of the Building and Grounds Committee of the library’s Board of Trustees, said this week that the informational brochure was one of the ideas suggested by Eugene Reelick of Hollandia Nurseries, to extend the theme of education to outside the library as well as inside.

Dr Kotch is taking on the project of formulating the brochure but said it would take about a year to complete since the landscaping project will be done in two stages, with approximately 60 percent of it completed now and the remainder finished in the spring.

He said Joanne Zang, a member of the landscaping committee, has raised the idea of marking the plants themselves with information that would connect to the informational brochure.

“We have to get the whole thing done first,” Dr Kotch said.

Currently, the project is targeting the front and north and south sides of the building. Landscaping around the rear of the building will be redone in the spring. “There’s too much boxwood now,” Dr Kotch said.

In addition, Mrs Woycik said many of the plantings get too much sun in the rear of the building. Healthy plants will be relocated to other areas of the library property, she said.

The front of the building will feature two rows of rhododendrons with large hemlocks framing the front entry. The library’s sign has been moved to make it more visible, Dr Kotch said.

Hollandia Nurseries employees began work on Monday, pulling out diseased and overgrown shrubs and replacing them with new ones. A hedge of PJM rhododendrons was being planted on the south side of the building on the lawn next to the handicapped parking area. Junipers and decorative stone will be added to the bank there to stabilize the soil, Dr Kotch said. A hedge of yews will be planted along the sidewalk.

Mrs Randall and local artist Betty Christensen arranged art exhibits at the library for several years, Mrs Woycik said.

“She was an excellent painter, and liked to have a contemporary flair to her art,” Mrs Christensen said. “She was a very generous person. We were good friends, and talked a lot.

“She was a great gardener. She had beautiful plantings in her home, such as orange trees. She had a southerly-facing window that was almost like a greenhouse. It was very nice.”

“She loved the theater, and all the fine arts,” resident Caroline Stokes noted this week, remembering a trip she and Mrs Randall made to the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven. “She was wonderful in reaching out to artists for the art show. She had devoted friends.”

The C.H. Booth Library is in possession of two paintings by Mrs Randall, one of which is of The Ram Pasture. Mrs Randall’s paintings were exhibited in galleries and public institutions from the 1940s to 1960s. She painted landscapes, portraits, and a wide variety of scenes. Her works were shown in private and public galleries, museums, libraries, and civic centers throughout western Connecticut and in New York City. Among them were the Riverside Museum, the Montrose Gallery, and the York Gallery in New York City, the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, and Athene Gallery in New Haven.

Her works were praised by art critics in many newspapers, including The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Danbury News-Times, The Newtown Bee, and Bridgeport Post, as well as in Cosmopolitan magazine.

She had attended Finch College and studied art at the Grand Central School of Art in Manhattan and the Academy Colarossi in Paris. She was a member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists in Norwalk and a former member of its board of directors.

She taught art to patients at Fairfield Hills Hospital. During World War II, she volunteered for the Red Cross Motor Corps and also sketched portraits of wounded soldiers to help boost their morale.