Connecticut’s Historic Gardens—

Unique Garden Sites Offer Visitors Beauty And Variety

OLD LYME — Connecticut is home to many beautiful and unique gardens both public and private. Recently, in an effort to help spread the word about their properties, nine historic gardens have joined to form Connecticut’s Historic Gardens. These delightful places, scattered throughout the state, offer visitors an opportunity to explore a variety of garden styles and time periods. In addition, seven of the sites have historic properties to further delight and educate visitors.

The group’s first project is to host a booth at the annual Connecticut Flower and Garden Show, February 26-29, at The Connecticut Expo Center in Hartford. There, visitors will be treated to a tableau painted by Old Lyme artist Judy Rathbun Whitney.

In the tradition of the famed early 20th Century artists who painted in the gardens at the Florence Griswold House, Ms Whitney’s eight- by ten-foot Impressionist-style watercolor will entice guests through a stone archway and down a garden path. The space will evoke the character of a historic landscape.

Representatives from the sites will be on hand to answer questions. Attendees can enter to win prizes, including specialized tours, from each location.

In conjunction with their presence at the Connecticut Flower and Garden Show, the group is also collaborating on a brochure.

“We want to help visitors interested in gardens, and particularly historic gardens, find the special places within our state,” said Barbara Bradbury-Pape, site administrator at the Bellamy-Ferriday House and Garden in Bethlehem. “Each one is so distinctive, visitors can plan weekend jaunts and visit several.” The sites are planning more collaboration throughout the year.

Every garden tells a story about a time and place in Connecticut’s rich history, from the state’s largest magnolia tree and a pink dogwood at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford that is more than 100 years old to the intimate Gertrude Jekyll Garden at the Glebe House Museum in Woodbury.

Three sites were designed by noted women landscape architects. In 1921, Amy Cogswell planned the Colonial Revival garden for the Webb House in Wethersfield. That same year, Beatrix Farrand, considered one of America’s foremost garden designers of her day, designed the gardens at Three Rivers Farm in Bridgewater. Farrand also designed the circa 1920 perennial sunken garden at Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington.

Other noted landscape architects represented include Andrew Jackson Downing and Jacob Weidenmann. A gothic revival garden based on Downing’s design at the Roseland Cottage in Woodstock includes 21 flowerbeds surrounded by 600 yards of boxwood hedge. At the Butler-McCook House in Hartford, Weidenmann’s 1865 garden oasis stands the test of time.

The sites are as follows:

*Bellamy-Ferriday House and Garden, 9 Main Street North, Bethlehem, was the home of the town’s first minister, the Rev Joseph Bellamy (1719-1790). Transformed into a summer residence in the 20th Century by the Ferriday family, the property features an 18th Century house filled with European, British and American antiques and a circa 1915 formal garden that boasts a collection of peonies, historic roses and lilacs, as well as mature specimen trees.

For additional information call 203-266-7596 or visit www.hartnet.org/als.

*Roseland Cottage, Bowen House at 556 Route 169 in Woodstock, was built in 1846 as a summer home for New York silk merchant, publisher and abolitionist Henry C. Bowen, a Woodstock native. The house, garden and outbuildings stand as one of the greatest surviving examples of Gothic Revival architecture in the country, exemplifying the principles of landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing.

The parterre garden includes 21 flowerbeds surrounded by 600 yards of boxwood hedge; each bed planted following Bowen’s 1850s plant inventory list. The property is owned by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities SPNEA; 860-928-4074 or www.spnea.org.

*Built in 1782, the Butler-McCook House at 396 Main Street, Hartford, was home to four generations of the same family for more than 189 years. The house is interpreted to the late 19th Century when Eliza Butler McCook, Rev James McCook and their seven children lived in the home. In 1865, the McCooks hired landscape designer Jacob Weidenmann to create a garden oasis for their home.

A treasure trove filled with family memorabilia, four of the McCook children donated their beloved family homestead to the Antiquarian & Landmark Society in 1971.

For information call 860-247-8996 or visit www.hartnet.org/als.

*Walking the 11 acres of the Florence Griswold Museum, a National Historic Landmark at 96 Lyme Street in Old Lyme, one appreciates its appeal to the artists who lived and worked there in the early 20th Century. Stand at the site of Childe Hassam’s favorite painting spot, stroll Miss Florence’s old-fashioned garden, and sit where William Chadwick posed his model for the now-famous “On the Porch.”

Visitors can enjoy a tour of the historic home and immerse themselves in American art in the new riverfront gallery.

For information call 860-434-5542 or visit www.flogris.org.

*Annie Burr Jennings, a Fairfield heiress and philanthropist, commissioned the Gertrude Jekyll Garden at Hollow Road in Woodbury in 1926. During a trip to England, Jennings asked Jekyll to commission an “old-fashioned” garden for the Glebe House.

The Jekyll garden was not installed, and the plans forgotten until a graduate student discovered them in the late 1970s. This discovery resulted in the eventual realization of the garden plan, which was finally planted in 1990. While small, the garden is a classic example of Jekyll’s ideas of color harmonies and plant combinations. The garden is open to the public year-round, during daylight hours.

Call 203-263-2855 or visit www.TheGlebeHouse.org.

*The gardens at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, 77 Forest Street in Hartford’s historic Nook Farm neighborhood, are compact yet lush. Inspired by Stowe’s love of plants and colors, the gardens include wildflowers, high Victorian plants, an abundant display of tulips and ever-blooming array of flowers from late March through late October.

Call 860-522-9258 or visit www.HarrietBeecherStoweCenter.org.

*Visitors can tour the art, architecture and Warren Manning-inspired grounds of the Hill-Stead Museum, a National Historic Landmark at 35 Mountain Road in Farmington. A one-acre Beatrix Farrand-designed perennial garden is the centerpiece of the 152-acre hilltop property.

Visitors can also ramble along walking trails and enjoy vistas, miles of original stonewalls, notable trees and an old dairy farm complex. There is also a renowned collection of French Impressionist paintings, furniture, Japanese woodblock prints and decorative art, all exhibited in the original domestic setting.

Call 860-677-4787 or visit www.hillstead.org.

*The Beatrix Farrand Garden at Three Rivers Farm, 694 Skyline Ridge Road in Bridgewater, was designed by one of America’s most talented landscape architects in 1921 for Dr Frederick Peterson, a noted New York neurologist. In 1992, the stone walled garden was rediscovered and restored with the intention to hold to the integrity of the original design.

Located on a beautiful 300-acre property where the Shepaug and Housatonic Rivers converge in Bridgewater, the garden is part of the storyline of its present steward, Promisek Incorporated, which is dedicated to incorporating the lives of those who have walked on this land into the ongoing work of its present ecological and ecumenical outreach.

Call 860-354-1788 or visit www.promisek.org.

*Originally designed by Amy Cogswell in 1921, the re-created Webb House Colonial Revival garden in Wethersfield is a nostalgic vision of the past. It features “old-fashioned” flowers such as peonies, phlox, hollyhocks and larkspur, as well as more than 40 antique roses.

The garden was meant to complement the Tea Room operated in the Webb House during the summer months from 1921 to 1924, and consequently is designed for late spring through early fall bloom cycle.

Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum is at 211 Main Street. Call 860-529-0612 or visit www.webb-deane-stevens.org.