Blog Memories: Visiting Wethersfield Estate & Garden
Enjoy this encore blog posting which originally ran on September 27th, 2022. It features my visit to a wonderful and historic garden.
I love visiting gardens around the country and around the world - especially when they are as enchanting and as beautiful as Wethersfield Estate & Garden in Amenia, New York.
Wethersfield was the country home of philanthropist, conservationist, and banking heir, Chauncey Devereux Stillman. In 1937, he bought two abandoned farms where he designed and developed his estate and eventually expanded the property to its current size of approximately 1,000 acres. Situated at the top of a hill with breathtaking mountain views, the home and land includes a three-acre formal garden, a seven-acre wilderness garden, a working farm, a carriage house and museum, and miles of woodland trails for hiking and horseback riding. Over the weekend, I toured the gardens and attended a lecture on Wethersfield hosted by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art - a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving the practice, understanding, and appreciation of classical design. Wethersfield Garden is described as the finest classical garden in the United States built in the second half of the 20th century - I do hope you take the opportunity to visit it someday.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
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- This is the historic front gate at Wethersfield Estate & Garden. The leaded urns are topped with camels from the Stillman Family crest.
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- Visitors to Wethersfield Garden are able to view the property map, showing the formal garden near the main house.
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- Wethersfield’s Director of Horticulture Toshi Yano greets guests and thanks everyone for attending the ICAA’s Bunny Mellon Symposium.
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- Here, a tall limestone urn in the distance marks the boundary between the working and designed landscape. One can see the Taconic mountain range beyond.
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- This is the Tempietto at the Belvedere. From here, one can see distant views of the Berkshires and the Catskills. It was important to Chauncey that the design of his stately Georgian-style colonial home include sweeping views of the area.
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- Here, weeping beech trees are pruned into columns to mark the four corners of the East Garden. Look closely, and one can see Fuchsias overflowing from the leaded urns.
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- Fuchsias were among Chauncey’s favorite flowering plants. Fuchsia is a genus of tropical perennial plants that produce exotic-looking, two-toned flower blossoms.
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- Here is another view inside the East Garden with its handsomely manicured hedges.
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- This statue shows Cupid riding a dolphin in a lovely niche of shale and bluestone. The wall doubles as a rock garden filled with alpine plants.
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- This is a limestone finial atop a brick column at the Cutting Garden.
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- This is the “Schooling Field” where Chauncey would train his Hackney horses for four-in-hand carriage driving. A field that also has sweeping mountain views.
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- This statue is of a panned piper on one side of an arch cut into an arborvitae hedge.
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- This is a very well-executed ha-ha – a “blind fence,” or a recessed landscape design element that creates a vertical barrier. In the distance one can see the slight change in color toward the end of the lawn marking a four foot drop meant to keep the livestock out of the garden.
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- The swimming pool at Wethersfield has been converted into a reflecting pool.
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- The curvature of the oval reflecting pool is echoed in the steps where masses of scented geraniums fill the air with perfume.
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- I admired the cherub with a finger to his lips. Toshi says it suggests to visitors that “silence is golden.”
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- This is a living rug in bluestone and turf grass. It marks the entrance to an arborvitae allée. The Naiad fountain at the very end is by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles.
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- Wethersfield is filled with unusual limestone and lead ornaments – this one also caught my eye.
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- Urns designed by Stanford White are filled with Artemisia mauiensis, or Maui wormwood – a perennial plant native to the island of Maui with mounding, soft silvery foliage.
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- It also looks so beautiful in this parterre.
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- This is the goldfish pool at Wethersfield’s Pine Terrace. The shale retaining walls in the garden are made of stones from the farm’s historic field walls.
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- Sweet autumn clematis, Clematis terniflora, flows over a fence with its white fragrant blooms. The hills of the Taconic range can be seen in the distance.
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- This stone step mounting block shows visitors entering or exiting that the owner had horses, and in this case, a collection of riding carriages.
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- And this is the west side of the main house at Wethersfield, beautifully maintained inside and out. The entire property is now managed by the Wethersfield Foundation. Go to the website at Wethersfield.org to learn more about this fabulous estate and garden.
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