Historical Society Is Planning

Its 13th Annual House And Garden Tour

The 13th annual Newtown Historical Society House & Garden Tour will include four antique homes dating from 1767 to 1826 and their beautiful surroundings, as well as a 1994 home with spectacular gardens.

The event, which will take place rain or shine on Saturday, July 19, will be this summer’s only public viewing of prominent garden author and lecturer Sydney Eddison’s very special garden. The private garden of Maureen McLachlan, a master gardener in the Borough, is also a part of the event.

The Homes With Gardens

*Hundreds of Stella de Oro daylilies greet visitors as they enter the long driveway leading uphill toward La Casa de Suenos or Bayit Halomot (House of Dreams). Located at 11 Farm Meadow Road and the home of Judy Fishman and Andy Wiggin, the house is also surrounded by dainty pink, white, and red roses, as well as a colorful rock garden. Once atop the hill, it becomes clear that there are several themes at play at Judy Fishman and Andy Wiggin’s soft pink home.

First there are the cats — lion sculptures guard the front door, the picket gate around back and the Monet garden across the great expanse of lawn; whimsical cats are everywhere (including one bathroom), and four friendly felines keep the couple’s two golden doodles in line.

Then there are the ornamental grasses, weeping trees, and gloriously colorful and bountiful perennial gardens that soften and frame the property that offers long views of Redding Ridge to the south and west and the foothills of the Berkshires to the north.

The house — designed and built in 1994 so every room has a sweeping view of the sunset — offers an ideal flow for entertaining and is an eclectic mix of warm Victorian-era elegance laced with informal southwest décor and playfulness.

The gentleman-farmer’s barn — designed and built by Mr Wiggin — is a more recent addition and adds another element of interest with its southwest motif on one side and its vegetable garden on the other.

*The property at 40 Flat Swamp Road, now the home of Sigrid and Kent Carpenter, was purchased from the Nunawach Indians in 1709. It passed through a number of owners until it was purchased by Daniel Crofut in 1760.

During his ownership, the main house was constructed sometime between 1770 and 1780. It was a comfortable farmhouse of the day with a dining room, parlor, large keeping room downstairs, three or four bedrooms upstairs, as well as an area in the attic where children may have slept.

In the early 1800s an addition was made creating two or three additional rooms upstairs and a summer kitchen downstairs. Around 1860, renovations to the front rooms of the house as well as the foyer reflect the Victorian era.

The owners have left the original floor plan intact and have backdated the rooms to reflect the time period in which it was built. It has a large walk-in fireplace in the kitchen with two beehive ovens, a fireplace in the dining room and living room, and Rumsford-style fireplace with large beehive oven in the summer kitchen.

A final addition was built in 1992, adding a two-car garage with an entertainment room overhead.

*The gracious Matterich House, circa 1790, occupies two acres at 188 Hattertown Road. The easiest approach is through a welcoming porch with flagstone floor and an English cupboard. The house was totally and authentically restored in the 1950s.

Current owners Matthew Schlansky and Richard Barker love the house, which they purchased in 1983 and totally refurbished over the years. Matthew laughingly claims that it was karma that attracted him to the house. As a fashion designer, he was excited to learn that the Hattertown district was known for producing buttons during the time of the American Revolution, and perhaps hats. He claims he barely got to the kitchen door before he knew he wanted this house.

Matterich House is chock-a-block with marvelous antiques gracing every room. The kitchen boasts a black and white checked floor and the house has four fireplaces, two of them active. The dining room enjoys a graceful fireplace with a Federal mantel and, while elegant, has a country feel.

The keeping room has a strong wood paneled fireplace. It also boasts a good collection of walking canes and a painting of Sam Ward, probably done by Daniel Huntington who studied under Gilbert Stuart. On one wall hangs a sampler on which the house is depicted done by Matthew.

As part of the 1950s renovation, this room, as well as the downstairs bedroom, were made larger. This bedroom has been dubbed the blue room because of its handmade blue fabric on the walls and the blue and white china from many countries that decorates those walls. The floors throughout, most of which are thought to be original, are of poplar, yellow pine, and oak.

The house is bedecked with formal portraits as well as primitive paintings. The master bedroom offers a wall of these as well as an entertainment center. The other bedroom upstairs has an interesting floor-to-ceiling skein that holds wound wool. Doors throughout are held open by antique doorstops of the canine variety.

The grounds of the Matterich House match the home: they have the feel of an English garden, with gracious lawns and trees such as apples and tulips. Boxwood clumps and hedges set off sections of the property and pachysandra nestles in shady nooks. Various flowers grace the property including hibiscus, geraniums, roses, hosta, iris, peonies, lilacs, and clematis.

A marshy area planted with towering swamp grass bounds the property in one area, as does a brook and many handsome stonewalls.

*The property owned by Richard and Nora Murphy, which includes a 1½-story circa 1767 Colonial and its gardens, at 159 Poverty Hollow Road, was last on the historical society’s tour in July 2005.

It was owned at one point by Lemuel Hawley, who was a grandson of Benjamin Hawley, the first Hawley to settle the northeast corner of Newtown. This is noted in Touring Newtown’s Past, as is the notation of “eyebrow or ‘lie-on-your-stomach’ windows under the front eve.”

According to Jo-Ann Scebold, who visited the property with Town Historian Dan Cruson while coordinating that tour three years ago, names on old maps also associated the property to the Godfrey (1867) and C.J. Beck (1905) families.

“There are three large [maple] trees in the front of the house, opposite the front door,” Ms Scebold said. “Rick Murphy told Dan Cruson and me they were planted by the original owner and each tree represented a child born in this house.”

First floor additions are architecturally interesting and lend to outstanding use of space. While the Murphys enjoy open hearth cooking, they also take pride in their beautifully handcrafted modern kitchen, which flows with the décor of their charming home.

“This house is interesting because the integrity of the original house remains,” said Ms Scebold. “The rooms have not been altered. Instead, the house with its additions almost tells the story of how it became larger [additions] over the years. You can still see where the original exterior walls exist.”

One Home

*The circa 1826 home of Mary Fellows and John Conk at 120 Walnut Tree Hill, with its 12½ acres, is an idyllic retreat. The original house was enlarged in 1967, but there may have been other additions.

Architectural roof shingles grace the Federal facade. A brick walk leads visitors from the home in one direction and a flagstone porch from another.

One of the most arresting rooms of the home is the large country kitchen. As you walk along its flagstone floors, note the large walnut island with mixed grain, suitable for large gatherings. Through the front door there is a foyer filled with an attractive hand painted mural of trees much like the forest out back.

On the left from the front door is a den or music room chock-a-block with books and music. On the right of the foyer is a living room that was enlarged by encompassing a porch. The floors here are chestnut; the furniture is modern primitive.

The room has an interesting coffin door, a working fireplace and a Dutch oven. Good natural lights help made the room pleasant.

The house — which includes 11 rooms and six bedrooms — also includes a family room, a dining room, and a downstairs bedroom. In every room charming antiques add character.

Two Gardens

*In 1960, Sydney Eddison and her husband Martin fell in love with a 19th Century farmhouse bounded on three sides by stone walls and surrounded by mixed hardwood forest. The garden behind that house, at 65 Echo Valley Road, will be one of two gardens open on July 19.

Today their garden, protected to the north and west by wooded hills and rocky outcrops, consists of a 100-foot perennial bed lying at the foot of an east-facing slope. Behind it, paths traverse the slope among 45-year-old rhododendrons and shade-tolerant perennials: hostas, ferns, gingers, epimediums, and in the darkest, driest corner, a mass of Euonymus fortunei (emerald gaiety).

At the foot of the long border, a panel of lawn stretches north, partially enclosed at the far end by the “new” beds, which were dug in 1990. On the east, an old juniper hedge separates the upper lawn from the lower lawn, where pools of shade are provided by two old apple trees; the sugar maples along the stone walls, and a Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima). Grown from seed and now 30 feet tall, the chestnut rises out of a semiwild bed of Geranium macrorrhizum, Brunnera, corydalis, and hostas.

An old garden is full of horticultural ups and downs. A Japanese fantail willow, with zigzagging branches and fascinating bumps along every limb, is rapidly succumbing to storm damage and old age. Ms Eddison recently lost another much-loved tree, a weeping cherry.

Willows and cherries are short-lived. Rhododendrons, on the other hand, survive and prosper for generations. Hers, planted in the early 1960s, are now magnificent specimens.

A garden is always a work in progress. Constant change is the essential fact of gardening and, indeed, of living.

“In the garden, perennials and shrubs, even trees, continue to change long after they have reached maturity, and so do gardeners,” said Ms Eddison, who continues to garden on her own after losing her husband in April 2005. “In response to advancing antiquity, I am using fewer kinds of perennials and returning to old standbys, like Sedum ‘Autumn Joy,’ which gives much and asks little. I am also replacing the more labor-intensive perennials with less demanding shrubs.”

Simplifying an old garden is a new adventure, and Ms Eddison counts herself fortunate to have the help of a talented young woman who visits once a week.

“By seizing every offer of assistance, making hard choices, and learning to live more comfortably with imperfection, I am making the garden easier to manage, inspired by the example of violinist Itzhak Perlman,” said Ms Eddison. “After losing one string of his violin during a performance, he played on and, at the end, told his audience that ‘Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.’ It is also the task of the older gardener.”

*A soft yellow painted Cape-style house, the charming home of Maureen McLachlan at 32 The Boulevard, is surrounded by many mature, lush, and beautiful flower gardens. These gardens are intermingled with spectacular trees, shrubs, grasses, and vines.

Ms McLachlan has created an exquisite garden to be enjoyed in all seasons, constantly changing with pleasing colors, harmonies, and textures. A visitor walking along the front walk will be greeted with a collection of the potter Guy Wolf’s handsome creations, which at this time of the year are displaying some of Ms McLachlan’s perennials, along with many of the plants in the property’s recently established Rose Garden.

Among other special features, Memory Gardens are each named for a friend or family member; numerous plantings of herbs, catmint, lavender, butterfly bushes, Russian sage, and boxwood, among other things, help keep the deer at bay (“The deer do not like things that smell,” says the certified master gardener). A recent addition to the house, the three-season garden room, gives Ms McLachlan and her family even more pleasure to view the surrounding plantings, such as Japanese willow with its variegated leaves that turn pink in the fall.

A healthy wisteria climbing over a nearby pergola with its purple flowers makes a show in May. Three Viburnum mariesii enhance the backyard in June with white lacelike flowers. Several hydrangeas such as grandiflora and tardive show off the autumn colors.

The noted gardener and author Tovah Martin wrote an extensive article in Connecticut magazine a few years ago depicting Ms McLaghlan’s gardens with handsome photos. Her gardens have also been featured in a Women’s Day “Gardening and Deck Design” special feature, and her gardens have also been part of the Mad Gardeners garden tours.

New This Year: An Art Show

In addition to the homes and gardens that are part of this year’s homes and gardens tour, the historical society will present an exhibit of works by a number of celebrated residents.

A picturesque antique barn surrounded by gardens on historic Main Street will house an art exhibit featuring the work of 12 artists with a wide range of artistic visions in a variety of media. All residents of Newtown, the artists are Paula Brinkman, an illustrator turned doll creator; Betty Christensen, who began her career as a watercolor artist but turned to oils and pastels, en plein aire, a few years ago; the internationally known photorealist Robert Cottingham; the children’s book author and illustrator Bruce Degen, who is also internationally known; the illustrator Ross MacDonald; Grace McEnaney, a watercolor artist and designer; Paul Meisel, children’s book illustrator; Ruth Newquist, NWS, a watercolor and oil artist who specializes in cityscapes and landscapes; primitive folk artist Stacy Olszewski; Linda Pickwick, a watercolor artist; Michelle Rosenthal, also a watercolor artist; and Virginia Zic, an abstract realist.

The setting for the art show and sale will be the antique barn behind The Budd House at 50 Main Street. George and Shane Miller have been restoring the building for a few years, and Mr Miller’s gardens have been growing exponentially by the season. Those gardens will also be included in the homes and gardens tour.

Shortly after their purchase of the Budd House eight years ago, the Millers began their renovation of the historic barn on the property, called Roadside Farm. It is not known whether the barn dates from the 1869 time period of the house, or if it was erected later, but it is certainly an older barn.

The structure was placed against a hill as many old barns were, with the lower floor below and the second floor at the top of the hill, which made it more convenient to access both floors.

The Millers began their rescue of this picturesque barn by restoring the roof, beams, and windows, and then proceeded to bring the barn to its present aesthetically appealing condition.

A wonderful gardener, Mr Miller has turned one of the stalls on the lower level into a potting shed as inspired by Martha Stewart. The lovely gardens now surrounding the barn are his creation.

Tickets & Other Information

Proceeds for the homes and gardens tour will benefit the Newtown Historical Society and are used to maintain the circa 1750 Matthew Curtiss House Museum as well as the educational programs of the society.

This self-guided tour will take from 11 am until 5 pm. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 on the day of the tour. Send checks to Newtown Historical Society House Tour, PO Box 189, Newtown CT 06470, before July 10. Please include name, address, and telephone number (for confirmation).

Tickets are limited to prevent overcrowding and may also be purchased at the circulation desk of Cyrenius H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street, during normal library hours; The Red Garage, 78 South Main Street; and Drug Center Pharmacy, 61 Church Hill Road.

On the day of the tour any remaining tickets will be sold only at the Matthew Curtiss House, 44 Main Street, from 10 am to 2 pm.

More information is available at www.NewtownHistory.org or 426-5937.