Voyageurs Ellsworth Rock Gardens
— a quiet man's twenty-year garden, kept by a park.
Not only on a wall.
Voyageurs Ellsworth Rock Gardens, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Jack Ellsworth ran a summer cabin across Kabetogama Lake and spent two decades building this hillside of terraced flower beds and stacked rock sculptures. The site is reachable only by boat. The National Park Service keeps the perennial beds and the original stone pieces; the view from the top step looks south across open water toward the Ash River shore.
The place, in three passes.
Ellsworth Rock Gardens sits on the north shore of Kabetogama Lake within Voyageurs National Park, on land Jack Ellsworth bought in 1944 for a family summer cabin. Between then and 1965 he built sixty-two terraced flower beds and roughly two hundred sculptures from glacial granite gathered on the property. The National Park Service has maintained the site since the park was established in 1975. It is accessible only by boat from Ash River or Kabetogama; the park runs interpretive tours during the summer season and the gardens are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The sculptures are local granite, much of it pink Vermilion granite that outcrops across the Canadian Shield. Ellsworth balanced and stacked the pieces dry, without mortar, working out the joins by eye. They range from low cairns to a fifteen-foot tower; one is shaped as a chair, several as animals. The granite is roughly 2.7 billion years old, among the oldest exposed rock on the continent. The Park Service stabilises and re-sets pieces as freeze-thaw shifts them across the winter months.
The gardens are open mid-May through September, weather permitting, and reached only by water. Most visitors come by private boat from the Ash River or Kabetogama landings, a crossing of three to five miles. The park's Kab-Ash water-taxi schedule changes by season; rangers post the day's runs at the visitor centers. A wood-chip path climbs the hillside through the beds. There is a small dock, vault toilets, and no other facilities. The site closes when fall storms make the crossing unsafe, usually by early October.
