Parking is limited so we need to car pool please.

Meet: at the Congregational Church, Elm St Camden by 8:35 AM

Sign Up: Karen Cease  kbcease@aol.com 

Cost: $15 a person.Mr. Cleaves prefers cash but will take a check.

For 37 years, Ken Cleaves has been clearing, moving rocks, and making paths in the woods of his Lincolnville 60 acre quarry property which he purchased for $16,000 in 1982. During those years he has transformed the land based on Japanese design, landscaping, and gardening principles.  He calls his tranquil, rambling landscape “Shleppinghurst.” 

Shleppinghurst Garden features wandering paths, ledges, stone walls, a spring fed pond edged with Japanese-style stonework, and an amphitheater-shaped quarry. Mr. Cleaves uses mostly native shrubs and trees to quietly enhance the natural landscape with tranquil beauty and symmetry

“It started out as a flower garden,” Cleaves relates. That flower garden has morphed into a well-tended Japanese garden that includes hundreds, if not thousands, of trees, shrubs and perennials-many native-that this gardener molded into a calm and serene Japanese-style garden tucked into a bit of rural Maine. And he has done it all “by hand,” with a come-along or levers and a wheel barrow.