Hartman Rock Garden ready to greet crowds again

After years of neglect, folk-art landscape has been restored to its 1930s prime


How to go

What: Grand reopening of the restored Hartman Rock Garden

When: 1 to 4 p.m. June 26

Where: 1905 Russell Ave. To get there, take South Yellow Springs Street to McCain Avenue, then just look for the giant stone castle.

Cost: Admission to the garden is always free seven days a week.

SPRINGFIELD — You never quite know what awaits when you move into an old house — could be a leaky faucet, could be “The Amityville Horror.”

Rod Hatfield still isn’t sure what the yellowish bungalow at 1905 Russell Ave. has in store for him.

“The first night, I gotta’ tell you, was kind of scary,” he confessed.

That first night, he swung open a kitchen cupboard and staring back at him was a gnome.

The garden variety.

Then he opened another cupboard — another gnome.

And another one.

And another.

The gnomes had friends, too — garishly painted little concrete figures of Depression-era sexpot Mae West, knockout champ Joe Louis and the smart-aleck dummy Charlie McCarthy.

Dozens of them in all.

“The first time, you open them up and laugh,” Hatfield explained one recent morning. “And then it happens again and again. It turns into a horror show. It’s like living with a million Chuckies.”

So, this is what life must have been like with Ben Hartman circa 1935.

The home’s most well-known previous occupant, Harry George “Ben” Hartman, dedicated the last 12 years of his life to crafting little homemade lawn ornaments of radio stars, comic strip characters, historical heroes, storybook legends and religious icons and placing them throughout a universe of his own making — one where a castle made of 100,000 rocks stands near a concrete replica of the White House and lies just a stone’s throw from the miniaturized killing fields of Flanders in World War I.

War, peace, religion and fantasy are all depicted in what became known in the 1930s as “Hartman’s Historical Rock Garden” in his Russell Avenue yard.

The fact that Hartman’s former house is crawling again with lawn ornaments is a good sign — all of Ben’s friends have come home.

After years of neglect, Hartman’s folk-art landscape in the southwest pocket of Springfield has been restored to the best of anybody’s ability.

With a grand reopening of the Hartman Rock Garden set for June 26, the colorful assortment of lawn ornaments soon will be scattered back throughout their sculptural environment — a sight that hasn’t been seen in at least a decade.

As the site’s first artist-in-residence, Hatfield will be the first person to live at 1905 Russell since before the Great Depression whose last name isn’t Hartman.

A Springfield native, photographer and new-media artist, Hatfield admittedly was unaware of the rock garden’s existence until he was asked to document the recent restoration of the site by the Kohler Foundation, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit committed to rescuing work made by self-trained artists like Hartman.

“I was simultaneously mystified and ashamed,” Hatfield, 44, said. “How can something this cool have escaped my knowledge? I travel the world seeking out this kind of stuff and here it is, right in our backyard. My backyard, literally.”

Never lost

Having moved in just two weeks ago, Hatfield is continually reminded that the Hartman Rock Garden was never lost to those who wanted to find it.

“This place is probably better known across the country than it is in town,” he said. “I’ve already given, like, 20 tours to people from all over and all walks of life.”

When a neighbor was warned that a lot of people would be coming through the neighborhood for the June 26 dedication, “She said, ‘They never stopped coming through here,’ ” Hatfield said.

Mark Chepp, director emeritus of the Springfield Museum of Art, was mowing the site’s grass Memorial Day weekend when a couple from Germany stopped to visit.

“In its universe, it’s a rock star,” Chepp said. “We haven’t even done any advertising and we get five groups a day coming to see it.”

It’s nothing new.

In 1932, the year Hartman began his project, it was reported that 500 people visited the blossoming rock garden during a single Sunday.

“There was always somebody that would come and look around,” recalled Ruth Hoover, Hartman’s 83-year-old daughter and a retired Northridge fifth-grade teacher.

In those days, she sold postcards of the place to visitors for 5 cents a piece.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘Wow, this is like a prehistoric Disneyland,’ ” Hatfield said. “The longer I was here, you could really sense Mr. Hartman’s passion for what he was doing.”

From depression to recession

These days, people learn about the rock garden on websites like RoadsideAmerica.com and in books like “Weird Ohio.”

Now they’ll be able to see what the site looked like before Hartman died in 1944 — before his wife’s perennials gave way to weeds.

The local group in charge of the site, a consortium of the Springfield and Turner foundations and the art museum, has been at work planting the flowers that always enhanced Hartman’s concrete creations.

That means Hatfield’s residency also comes with “practical applications,” as he puts it.

In other words, he’s been watering and weeding the garden.

That’s something Hoover remembers all too well.

“It kept me there at home,” she said, explaining that there was always some kind of work to help her parents with. “It was an awful lot.”

The whole thing started as a way for Ben Hartman, then 48, to keep busy after losing his job as an iron moulder during the Depression.

“We didn’t have much, but it did give Dad something to do,” Hoover said.

Hoover was so familiar with the garden she was able to draw a map for the Kohler Foundation of what was planted where.

“I think God was involved in this,” she said.

If nothing else, the timing of the rock garden’s restoration isn’t lost on Hatfield.

The garden was born of the Depression, he noted, and the nation has been gripped by eerily similar circumstances in recent years.

Just prior to the “Great Recession,” Hatfield was being sent all over the globe to photograph the world’s flashiest car shows.

Now he finds himself on Russell Avenue, living in Ben Hartman’s old house and looking out on a one-of-a-kind yard.

“This,” Hatfield said, “is giving me a chance to evaluate my life again.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.

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