MEET JILL AND BOB

Jill Nooney

Jill Nooney, creator of Bedrock Gardens along with her husband Bob Munger, spent 40 years designing and building the 30-acre garden while working and raising a family. Bob and Jill are a synergistic pair with complimentary skills. She bubbles with ideas and he brings them to life.

She attended Bennington College and obtained a degree in Clinical Social Work from Smith. She worked professionally as a Clinical Social Worker for 42 years, first at the Phillips Exeter Academy and then at the Exeter Counseling Center, a practice she formed in 1986.

She has had a lifelong love of plants creating her first garden when she was nine, and is still an avid plant collector to this day.

She began making her own art for the garden, and, in 1996, started the business Fine Garden Art and Ornaments (along with a friend), selling her own work as well as architectural salvage. It closed after 20 years.

She has had a lifelong interest in design and obtained a certificate from the Radcliffe Seminars Program in Landscape Design, which enriched her ideas about shaping experiences in a large landscape. Because of her other commitments it took her 11 years to graduate—not quite the record, but almost. Bedrock Gardens is full of pieces of her art and is an expression of her experimental and irreverent nature. The garden has been referred to as one large integrated piece of art.

After a ten-year process of becoming a 501(c)(3), establishing a board, passing by-laws, hiring an executive director, and building a parking lot, in 2023 Bob and Jill gifted 25 acres to the Friends of Bedrock Gardens to continue to be run as a public garden.

In 2024, she wrote a book about the journey, Bedrock, The Making of a Public Garden. And what a journey it has been.

She serves currently as the Director of Art and Horticulture and has been on the board since its formation in 2013.

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Bob Munger

Although born and raised in Lexington, VA, Bob received his education in the north at Putney School, Haverford College (B.A.), MIT (M.S.), and Case Western Reserve Medical School (M.D.). He practiced Internal Medicine, Primary Care, and Geriatrics in Exeter, NH until retiring in 2006.

Bob's path to gardening was indirect. As a teenager, he worked in his father's extensive garden, Boxerwood, and hated it. He successfully avoided gardening for decades until marrying Jill, whose passion for gardens gradually won him over. He gravitated toward hands-on work—wiring, plumbing, chain sawing, construction, and stonework—and creating (and fixing) messes.

These days he spends most of his time on the computer, focused on website design, layouts, finances, and all things Mac. He is also a Justice of the Peace.
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Bob has served on the board since its founding in 2013 and has been treasurer throughout.