A Garden Party With An International Flavor

By Shannon Hicks

Lilleba Peterson and Dave Luessenhop hosted a garden party for members of The International Club of Newtown at their Valley View Road home earlier this month that was, said Mr Luessenhop, “just for fun.”

About three dozen people attended the event, which, thanks to beautiful weather on May 10, took place primarily outside the residence the couple designed and built 45 years ago.

“We have about seven events each year and this was one of them, just for fun,” Mr Luessenhop said this week. “It’s always just for fun.”

The International Club is a social and cultural club made of up people from other countries as well as the United States who have resided overseas and speak the languages of the countries they represent. Participants share their varying cultural backgrounds — the current board of directors alone has representation for Argentina in president Patsy Rapela, Switzerland with vice president Michel Dolivo, Russia with secretary Inna Federov, the US with treasurer Jim Rutte, and France with program coordinator Bernadette Rutte — and welcome other new arrivals to the area.

The club meets monthly in the homes of members.

Ms Peterson and Mr Luessenhop consider their home a Scandinavian retreat. The house is filled with items from Norway and Scandinavia, from the traditional costume that usually hangs from a front closet, a living room full of furniture that was shipped to Newtown from the home of Ms Peterson’s mother, cabinets and shelves filled with cobalt blue dinnerware, pots and pans from Norway, and even to the blue that colors the kitchen walls — a very popular color in Scandinavia, according to Ms Peterson.

The couple designed and built the home 45 years ago. She did the blueprints with her uncle, Al Christinsen, a former contractor. The three-bedroom ranch has served the couple well, even if it isn’t huge by today’s standards.

“It’s not big, but we didn’t have big homes 45 years ago,” Mr Luessenhop told The Bee just last summer when he and Ms Peterson opened their home for Newtown Historical Society’s Annual Homes & Gardens Tour. “It’s just the right size, though. We raised two children here.”

The property was previously used as a farm, which meant the gardens were also started from scratch.

“There were no trees, nothing on it,” said Mr Luessenhop. “But we had a lot of good soil.”

Evidence of that soil can be seen from the moment guests walk through the home’s solarium. There are flowers and specimen trees including magnolias, Japanese dwarf cypress, Scotch pine, azaleas, rhododendron, hydrangea, and snowball bushes.

The May 10 celebration was not meant to be a full meal, but the smorgasbord of potluck offerings meant everyone could leave with a full stomach nevertheless.

“It was planned as hors d’oeuvres, drinks and socializing, with the hors d’oeuvres following the Spanish tradition of tapas,” or small sandwich-like finger foods, he said. Thirty-five members and guests attended the garden party.

For information about the International Club of Newtown, contact Mr Luessenhop, who is the club’s publicist and historian, at 270-7093.