Bartlett Arboretum > Reflect > Robin & KenRobin and Ken (aka Birdie Bartlett & Kentucky White)
You might fondly recall Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plaine as a place you and you family visited during Tulip Time, where your class took field trips or perhaps where your cousin Sally was married. But just a few years ago, the turn-of-the-last-century masterpiece was in disrepair, a forest abandoned to weeds and brambles. Now, thanks to music, chance, and the unlikely love story of a Texas math teacher and a Kentucky banjo player, the Arboretum is coming back to life.
In 1997, the teacher-singer and songwriter Robin Macy, then moonlighting as a DJ for a Dallas radio station, was traveling across Kansas to perform at the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival. In Cowley County she took a wrong turn. Lost on country roads, she happened upon a FOR SALE sign hung on a pair of rusted iron gates. Through the overgrowth she saw old pathways, stone tables and the broken spirit of an abandoned garden. She hadn’t known Bartlett Arboretum in its glory days, but she saw its promise, and before a week had passed she’d sold her big city sports car and borrowed enough to make a down payment on a mortgage.
One Saturday night she went to a Wichita barbecue joint where bluegrass music was on the menu. Standing at the soda machine, she heard Ken White before she saw him--a crackerjack marksman of a guitar slinger, she would later say--flat-picking note for note Tony Rice’s version of “Old Train.” She stopped dead in her tracks with half a glass of Coke.
They grew up in different decades, in different parts of the country, but both felt that in the heartland they’d found their missing piece. They knew all the same tunes and harmonies. He taught her to love Ralph Stanley. She introduced him to Lucinda Williams. He’d been in Kansas for short time, had started a small marketing business, playing side gigs, and raising his son. After a long courtship they married, and found their calling as the current stewards of Bartlett Arboretum.
Robin is known for her distinctive, other-era voice and love of all things old, including tractors, dogs, Martin guitars and vintage gardens. A founding member of the Dixie Chicks, she left the group because she wanted to stay true to her roots in music. Ken is a renowned Nashville sideman who at age 14 won the Kentucky State Banjo Championship. Son of an Army paratrooper and a school cafeteria worker, he grew up determined to play music, despite the obstacles. As a boy he once planted a tobacco patch, cut, dried, and sold it in order to afford a sound system. Both Robin and Ken are faithful to their bluegrass roots, performing regularly around the region.
Now they are dedicated to restoring and sustaining the Kansas jewel that is Bartlett Arboretum. They don’t do it alone, of course. Various Kansas characters have wandered into their lives and onto the property: a Westar retiree with a twinkle in his eye and a sharp chainsaw in his truck bed, a master gardener to prune the roses, a craftsman to build a Garaj Mahal and stage, an arborist to trim the mature tree canopy, a wrangler to deal with a stubborn badger. Small but devoted armies of gardening enthusiasts - the Soil Sisters and Brothers - are dedicated to the ongoing renaissance. They are the lifeblood of Arb support.
As with any business, Robin and Ken have a bottom line to consider. They’re continually looking at ways for the Arboretum to sustain itself, ways that also contribute to a sense of community spirit and pride. They have re-instituted weddings in the gardens and have added concerts among the trees along with salons in the refurbished Santa Fe Railroad Depot, recently relocated onto the property. They throw an annual Great Gatsbyesque croquet benefit, corporate events and garden clubs. Growing seasonal produce for their community, a food desert, the arboretum hosts a weekly farmers’ market and the Live from the Whistlestop supper and song initiative.
Bartlett Arboretum is now part of the Legacy Community Foundation in Winfield, Kansas, a 501(c)3. Patrons are able to make tax-deductible contributions through this organization to enable the continued revival of the historic property. Each day as they open the Arboretum’s gates and invite visitors to stroll among the towering trees, to hear birdsong or bluegrass or only the breeze, Robin and Ken hope that these acres they tend will provide solace and peace, a chance to gather in wonder at the beauty of the natural world, and, like music, a way to commune with the spirit that connects us all.
