In the photo below left, we see Eloise Butler crossing the rustic bridge at the head of the Mallard Pool. The year is 1932. She has physically weakened due in part to neuritis and from burns received in 1929 when a heating pad caught fire while she was sleeping. The development of this pool was long on gestation and short on actual building. She had dreamed for many years of creating an aquatic pool for special plants and the site at the north end of the Garden where the bog drains out was the best site in the Garden, but she could not move the idea to reality until 1932 when the pool was quickly constructed by an unemployed man and another was employed to build a rustic bridge of tamarack poles to span the small stream the flowed into the pool. When a mallard was soon seen in it, it became the “mallard pool.” Eloise had planned extensive plantings around the pool and these were completed by Martha Crone in 1933.

In the photo below right, we see the current version of the rustic bridge located further into the Garden from where the original was. The Garden border was shortened in later years and only the southern part of the original pool area is now within the Garden fence. That current part of the pool was renovated some years ago and is under consideration for restoration again today, as the progress of time and changes in the environment have worked their ways on the area. It is easy to see that the open water pool of 1932 is now much filled in with grass and sediment and it has only a small amount of open water in the summer months.