Nancy Dennis Burrows died peacefully in her sleep on Nov. 15, 2003, in Santa Barbara, Calif. She was 82 years old and had lived in Santa Barbara for the last 35 years. Nancy was born and brought up in Bennington, Vt., the daughter of Margaret Colgate and James Dennis. Her high school years were spent in Virginia at Chatham Hall, from which she graduated in 1939; she went on to Bennington College. Her sister, Peggy Love, lived in Cockeysville, Md. She had one brother, David Dennis, who was in the 10th Mountain Division and was killed in action in Italy in April 1945.
In World War II, she joined the WACs and was assigned to the OSS, where she always laughingly referred to her exalted role in the typing pool. During her stint in Washington, she met and married her husband, Robert Henry Burrows, a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy, in December 1945. After the war, they began their married life together in Pasadena, Calif., subsequently moving to Llewellyn Park, West Orange, N.J.
Nancy's love of flowers, gardening and horses led them to move to Far Hills, N.J., where she managed Windy Hill Farm and imported some of the first Connemara ponies to the U.S. from Ireland. In 1968, they moved to Santa Barbara, and she began a 30-year project of building great gardens at Stornoway, her home in the hills of Montecito. She was an active member of the Garden Club of America in each place she lived, became a horticulture judge and received a lifetime award for her work in the GCA. She was on the board of their Garden Guild in 1972. She was a docent at the Santa Barbara Botanica Garden and at Madam Ganawalda's famous garden, Lotusland, in Santa Barbara.
Her first love, though, was the flowering of Stornoway, and she established a great collection of plants from around the world, including Protea from South Africa and Australia, cedar trees from her husband's ancestral home in Bermuda and succulent plants from around the world. Nancy's specialty was in hybridizing irises, and her gardens in Stornoway were a blaze of color every spring. The Garden Conservancy toured her gardens in 1995. In addition to her love of gardening, she loved writing and family history. After her husband died in 1985, she became a prolific, though unpublished, author of 2 books, Tomorrow Comes the Song and I Saw the Morning Break, and many historic monographs of the Colgate family. She leaves behind her 4 children, Susan Burrows Dabney of Bozeman (married to Dab Dabney), David Burrows, Fred Burrows and Margaret Burrows; 9 grandchildren, including Eliza and Samantha Dabney of Bozeman; and 1 great-granddaughter.
Services were held at All-Saints-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara on Nov. 22. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to the Visiting Nurse and Hospice Care of Santa Barbara or the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden.
Bozeman Daily Chronicle (MT) - Saturday, December 13, 2003