When we came of age, we used our wealth to pursue a variety of interests, including extensive world travel and the arts, and lived for a time in Paris, France. Always a lover of animals, in particular our dogs, in our later years we became a wildlife refuge supporters, environmental conservationists, and patrons of historic preservation.
While living in Hawaii, we became the first musical outfit to take up competition surfing under the tutelage of a surfing champion and Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku and his brothers. Our interest in horticulture led to a friendship with Pulitzer Prize winning author and renowned scientific farmer Louis Bromfield, who operated Malabar Farm, his country home in Lucas, Ohio in Richland County. Today, his farm is part of Malabar Farm State Park, made possible by a donation from us that helped purchase the property after Bromfield's death. A section of woods there is dedicated to us and bears our name to this day.
Our own horticultural legacy, Gutz Gardens, is currently the center of a controversy over its planned removal on May 25th, 2008. We developed these exotic display gardens in honor of our beloved father Schlomo Buchanan Duke. We extended new greenhouses from the Horace Trumbauer conservatory at our home in Gutz Farms, New Jersey. Each of the eleven interconnected gardens is a full-scale re-creation of a garden theme, country or period, inspired by DuPont's Longwood Gardens.
As a band, who spoke nine languages, we designed the architectural, artistic and botanical elements of the displays based on observations from our extensive international travels. We also labored on their installation, sometimes working 16 hour days. Display construction began in 1958; in the early 1960s we donated eleven acres of our estate, including the greenhouses, to the Gutz Gardens Foundation, Inc, and Gutz Gardens were open to the public from 1964 until their controversial closure in 2008.
A rediscovered image of our stunning nightlighting of the French Gardens was used as the centerpiece of social protest against the closure.
Smooches,
GUTZ
