Tom Gasaway has a very big garden to look after. It’s called the University of Maine campus where he has served as landscape horticulturist for the past 15 years.

“All the trees shrubs, flower beds and planters, even seeding new lawns, I’m responsible for just about everything except the mowing,” explains Gasaway as he dashes to set up another sprinkler in a parched flower bed. “This summer is the driest I’ve seen since I came here. Many of the trees are beginning to turn brown or go dormant because of the drought.”

Busy as he is, one might expect that Gasaway would find little time for creativity, but the opposite is true. He has brought all manner of new ideas to the mission of beautifying UM’s campus. Most impressive of these are the rock berms that have been built in several places.

Originally conceived by Gasaway and Tom Cole, head of the physical plant at the university, as visual screens to hide such eyesores as the motor pool, the berms evolved into something of a grand horticultural statement. Rather than simply pile up earth and cover it with lawn, Gasaway reckoned the berms could be made into very large rock gardens.

“It didn’t cost anything,” he recollects, “because we had all the rocks stockpiled at the edge of the campus, and we grew all the plants from seed in the greenhouse. But I had a hard time selling the idea to a lot of skeptical people.”

Indeed the berms were not instantly recognizable as things of beauty since they initially looked more like piles of rubble than anything else. But Gasaway never lost sight of his initial vision, and the perennials he planted between the rocks and nurtured during the critical rooting-in period have all grown to full size now. The effect is stunning, and each year the berms grow to look more natural, more like they belong where they are. The skeptics are silent.

Of course, the challenge with any perennial garden is to combine plants with different bloom times to create a constant and ever-changing palate of color. Gasaway is always trying new species and evaluating the performance of earlier plantings. Perfection is never achievable, but with continual refinements the gardens perform a little better each year.

The new project on campus which occupies Gasaway’s imagination is a rose garden to be planted just opposite the entrance to the Maine Center for the Arts. He envisions that people who attend evening concerts will be able to stroll through a semi-formal planting at sunset and breath in the luscious scent of roses before entering the hall.

As with any long-term planting, the initial stages have more to do with earth-moving and the setting of stones than the selection of plant material. Gasaway found a treasure trove of granite curbing stones buried at the edge of campus. Mixed in among them was one round granite piece shaped like a mill stone with a tree carved in the middle of it. “Can’t you just see that stone in the middle of a little knot garden?” he asks with the excitement of a painter anxious to begin his next portrait.

The budget is tight at the University of Maine these days, and Gasaway feels he may have to look for outside support to make the rose garden live up to its full potential.

Whether it’s the big bed planted beside Alfond Arena which spells out ’93 CHAMPS in geraniums and marigolds or the innumerable planters and urns dripping with lush foliage and flowers, Gasaway and his small crew of helpers put not only their hands but their hearts as well into the job of beautifying Maine’s campus.