The old house that is home to Al and Anne Rohe’s Adirondack Ambiance bears the marker “Circa 1804,” denoting the time it was built by Stephen Griffing, a commissioned officer in the colonial army. Griffing had traveled by wagon from Dutchess County to the newly-formed town of Thurman a couple of years earlier, moving into a small log cabin on this southern Adirondack land. Here, where periodic flooding had perhaps deposited just a little extra silt on the desperately thin layer of topsoil typical of the Adirondacks, Griffing built his home and began to farm.

His son Nathaniel inherited the property in the 1840s and made major changes to the house, but most of the land has remained otherwise undeveloped, extending across the road to the river. The river is a fickle friend, in summer supplying badly-needed water for crops and livestock, and in spring scouring the land with violent eruptions of ice and water when ice jams burst free.

Over decades the property has been home to many families and even has been a vacation destination for tourists who arrived by train at Thurman Station just across the road. When the Rohes returned to Thurman in 1988 after a few years’ stay out of state, they moved into this house, which her mother had acquired, and opened Thurman Station Nursery, selling annuals, perennials and shrubs. Al operated landscaping and sign-painting businesses. Flowers bloomed in the dooryard, and out behind the old house a bounteous garden supplied them with food.

Their two older children had gone off to college by that time, but their youngest, Amber, did most of her growing up here. Amber’s passion for gardens was ignited, and her favorite reading from about age nine on was Organic Gardening, which she grabbed from the mailbox and whisked up to her room to devour. She attended Warrensburg Central School, where Anne was a substitute teacher and an aide for students with special needs.

Anne originally had been an art major at SUNY New Paltz, but soon found the skill level of her classmates intimidating and opted for a degree in elementary education instead. Jobs, child-rearing and family business concerns relegated her interest in art to the back burner. “Sometimes I’d make a card for someone’s birthday, or something, but mostly I was doing other things,” Anne says.

One spring, flood waters and ice from the Hudson destroyed most of their tree and shrub stock, and she and Al closed the nursery. Amber headed off to college, Anne retired from teaching, and Al built first a saw mill, and then a smaller, more energy efficient home on the hill behind the old Griffing homestead. He milled wood from the property for the structure, and hauled native stone for the fireplace. Anne’s mother, now 95, lives with them most of the time, but stays in an apartment in the old house when weather and health permit.

With the new home completed and the family raised, what new projects would occupy their future? And what role could be played in that future by the old farmhouse with all its charm?

The land held the answer. Al decided to make rustic furniture, an interest he had long wanted to act upon. His carpentry skills and intuitive sense of style and proportion enabled him to select and combine slabs, branches and roots in intricate designs that rival the finest furniture in the Adirondack great camps. In his hands, chairs, tables and bookcases grew to life from a drying shed full of findings from trees on the property. Whimsical pieces were added to the furniture – like the giant fish with birch bark scales, and carved owls that practically fly out of the shop.

In 2006 the old house became a rustic furniture shop called Adirondack Ambiance, and as Al’s creations were placed in the near-empty rooms, it became apparent that something else was needed. Al urged Anne to dust off her palette and brushes and revisit her interest in painting. She pulled out her extensive collection of family photographs, selecting pictures of her children and grandchildren, and began capturing the scenes on canvas. Images of kids playing in leaves, balancing on a rail of the nearby railroad tracks or playing beside a pond took life in her work. “I feel so at peace when I am painting. I love painting children the best, because their body language is so interesting,” she says. Adirondack scenery plays a close second, and the Hudson and Schroon Rivers, old barns and houses and picturesque lakes and mountains vie for attention in her growing collection.

Al put his skills to work creating unique frames for them. A pasture full of tail-switching horses is fenced in by frame of barn boards trimmed with barbed wire. A pileated woodpecker drumming on a tree feels right at home in a frame dressed in bark that was pierced by another woodpecker’s bill. Twigs, birch bark and almond-shaped slices of branches all figure heavily into Al’s frames, and both Al and Anne fill custom orders, as well. One of Al’s customers needed a log railing for a porch, and another asked for a specially designed headboard. An art customer wanted to buy for her daughter a painting of sheep that Anne had done, because her daughter also had sheep. On impulse she sent a photo of her daughter’s flock and asked for a new painting with those particular sheep painted into the scene in place of the original critters.

While Al and Anne were launching this new venture, Amber was breaking new ground, as well. With a fine arts degree now under her belt, she went in quest of a master’s degree in landscape architecture at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, a program she will complete next year. She is conflicted about where she will use her newfound skills. Will she seek out creative ventures in some elaborate urban project that emphasizes plant-based design? Or will she return to the mountains, lakes and rivers of her beloved Adirondacks and try to define and implement a landscaping statement she refers to as “Adirondack Vernacular” – a kind of design that complements the character of our regional terrain and reflects Adirondack history and values using native species? When Amber’s budding career takes her away from home (she’ll be redesigning a park in the Catskills this summer), her dad shoulders some of her responsibilities in their garden until she’s able to rejoin them. She retains her passion for horticulture, and, like both parents, unleashes her creative and artistic senses in all her efforts. “She’s doing something in the garden with sunflowers this year,” Anne says. “I can’t wait to see how that turns out.”

A fourth generation has come to celebrate the gifts of the land at the old Griffing homestead. Each summer waves of grandchildren splash onto its shores, to be absorbed by the gardens, the household chores and the shop called “Adirondack Ambiance.” Michael, a teen, caught the gardening bug from his Aunt Amber and is equally drawn to work on his grandpa’s projects. Young Leah, a budding entrepreneur, is shop opener, making sure the “Open” sign is hung properly before she sets about dusting the furniture. Her older sister Emma is shop closer, taking in the sign and securing the building at the end of the day.

Adirondack Ambiance seems to be the right niche for the generations of the Rohe family, all tied together by the land and its gifts. It provides an outlet for the best of their skills and talents, and is a reflection of their passions.

Adirondack Ambiance welcomes guests Memorial Day Weekend to Labor Day Weekend, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., at 792 NYS Route 418, Thurman. For more information, 518-623-3813 or 623-3600.

Persis Granger is a freelance writer from Thurman, the author of two novels and organizer of Fiction Among Friends events for writers.