Newspaper Article about Award of Excellence


 from PORTSMOUTH HERALD, May 12, 1998, Business Week

NATIVE OF GERMANY CULTIVATES HIS GREEN THUMB ON SEACOAST

Artist uses his talents to design and landscape properties in Portsmouth

By Erwin Bierhans, Contributing Writer
 

Finding the home of Thomas Berger and Charlotte Gindele, also the office of their firm, Green Art, is not a problem. The house, on an otherwise ordinary residential Portsmouth street, is surrounded by glorious gardens in full bloom. Green Art lost almost $2,500 in its first year of operation, but 3 1/2 years later, Thomas Berger is doing extremely well. His design and installation of the garden for the Pleasant Street home of Tom and Virginia Kelleher won the 1998 New Hampshire Landscape Association's Leon Pearson Merit Award for landscape excellence. The garden will be a stop on the Portsmouth spring garden tour.

To meet such goals, the native of Germany's Mosel River valley often works from 7 a.m. to midnight.
Charlotte, formerly a resident of upstate New York, met Thomas Berger while they were working in West Africa - she for the Peace Corps, he for a German firm teaching agricultural workers pest and erosion control.
"When we married in the mid-'80s, I agreed to come to the States," Thomas said. We looked around for a suitable place to live, were considering Plymouth in Massachusetts, but when we saw Portsmouth, our decision was made."
 The Bergers have two children, Martina, 4, and 2-year-old Christoph.
In the first year of operation, $1,000 of advertising netted Berger's business one account, which was followed by a few more clients from ads in the phone book. A real estate broker he knew in Boothbay, Maine, helped Berger to get some business for which he still travels north to tend.

 
"Today, my business comes mainly from word-of-mouth," he said, noting he now has a "fleet" consisting of a dump truck and a small landscaping truck.
 "These things are expensive, but I must have them to be efficient and to compete," he said. Working with a full-time foreman, a seasonal worker, and Charlotte on a part-time basis, Green Art offers landscaping services, such as design and implementation of gardens, including natural stonework, stone walls, stone and brick paths, and terraces. Green Art pays special attention to entrances and shady areas, Berger said.
"We also provide a wide selection of reliable plants for every site and purpose," he said. "What we do is analyse the site, create a design for the whole property, install all the brick terraces and walkways. And after all that is done, we plant the area."
Berger is multitalented; he is also an accomplished watercolor artist and a sculptor. He proudly shows a photographic collection of his watercolors depicting New England scenes, as well as those of his native Mosel valley in Germany. This work has mostly been given to friends and family.		 His artistic skills are shown in the site plans he creates and in his property's gardens that are enhanced by his sculpture. Berger translated his knowledge of organic pest control into a series of stamps for the African nation of Niger. The stamps feature a number of insects that negate the need for chemical pesticides.
 "In the winter, when landscaping is at rest, we craft garden sculptures, birdbaths and sundials," Charlotte said. "These individually designed and hand-crafted sculptures have all the uniqueness that mass-produced castings never can offer. They are especially hard to find elsewhere and real gems for the garden."
 Berger also has a collection of artifacts he got while working in Germany and throughout Europe. Many items, he said, are thousands of years old.
 Although his garden is already a neighborhood showplace, Berger said he has additional plans for his property that has a corner devoted solely to plants native to New Hampshire.
 "I have started a wading pool for our children" he said, " and plan to convert a shed to an authentic German beer garden."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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