A Green Thumb
The gardens and landscapes preserved by the National Trust for Historic Preservation
By Hannah Lepow | Online Only | September/October 2008
Filoli
Filoli, located 30 miles south of San Francisco in Woodside, Calif., is 654 acres of color. The estate is anchored by a 43-room English Country manor and surrounded by designer Bruce Porter's 16-acre formal garden. The focal point of this sculpted landscape is the sunken garden – a reflecting pool surrounded by patterned flowerbeds and boxwood and enclosed in a yew hedge. Standing over the sunken garden is a 1918 clock tower, whose chime echoes throughout the property.
Filoli is eager to have you volunteer. Visit www.filoli.org/volunteer.html for more information.
Kykuit
While Vice President Nelson Rockefeller's stunning modern art collection may be what initially draws you to Kykuit, the 300-acre Rockefeller estate along the Hudson River valley in Tarrytown, N.Y., be sure to stick around for the gardens. Roman and Renaissance models inspired landscape architect William Welles Bosworth, but the garden also incorporates Islamic and Japanese touches in its vast setting. More than 70 pieces of 20th-century sculpture are placed around the garden, highlighting the landscape's natural architecture.
Tours are available from May to November. Visit http://www.hudsonvalley.org/content/view/12/42/ for more information.
Lyndhurst
Also in Tarrytown is Lyndhurst, owned over its history by three New York societal titans – the Pauldings, the Merritts, and the Goulds, who each added their own personal touches to the 67-acre setting. The garden is home to the first steel-frame conservatory in America. What will catch your eye today is the stone gazebo at the center of Helen Gould's rose garden.
Tours are available year round. Visit http://www.lyndhurst.org/visit.html for more information.
Brucemore
On a hilltop in Cedar Rapids, Iowa lies a veritable guidebook to early 20th-century gardening styles. At Brucemore you'll see the Prairie-style plan of landscape architect O.C. Simonds, as well as how the country place and Arts and Crafts movements influeced the development of the 26-acre estate.
Brucemore trains a group of volunteers who then work extensively in the garden. Visit www.brucemore.org for more information
Shadows-on-the-Teche
This former sugarcane plantation in New Iberia, La. was one of the South's first private restorations. William Weeks Hall, who embarked on the project in 1920, hoped that his garden would "never have the look of a man just out of a barber's chair." And the thick vegetation lining the front walk along with the blend of azaleas, camellias, sweet olives, gingers, and magnolias mesh with the 1834 Greek Revival-style house in the exact natural way Weeks Hall had hoped for.
Tours are available year round. Visit http://www.shadowsontheteche.org/shadows_visit.html for more information.
Glass House
The Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, Conn. sits on a 47-acre campus that is a centerpiece for modern architecture, landscape, and art. Johnson called the house his best and only "landscape project." While it was designed by Johnson and completed in 1949, the landscape actually owes much of its character to David Whitney, Johnson's partner, who was an avid gardener.
Tours are available. Visit http://philipjohnsonglasshouse.org/visit/ for more information.
Farnsworth
The landscape surrounding Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House is markedly different from these other sites. Finished in 1951, the house lies on the banks of the Fox River, 58 miles southwest of Chicago near Plano, Ill. The stillness of this manmade structure contrasts distinctly with the subtle movements of the un-sculpted nature that surrounds it.
Tours of the house are available from April-November; the grounds are open year round. Visit http://www.farnsworthhouse.org/visitor.htm for more information.
Woodlawn
While you're sure to know about George Washington's home Mount Vernon, equally worth a visit is Woodlawn, the home of Major Lawrence and Nelly Custis Lewis. The former being President Washington's nephew and the latter being Martha Washington's granddaughter, they were understandably doted upon by the first First Family, who provided 2,000 acres of the Mount Vernon estate to the young couple and selected the site on which the house would be built. Dr. William Thornton designed the Alexandria, Va. building, where many Mount Vernon artifacts are displayed.
Tours are available from March-December. Visit http://www.woodlawn1805.org/visit.htm for more information.
Acoma
For a completely different landscape, check out Acoma, N.M., where the name "Sky City" is an understatement. 55 miles west of Albuquerque, Acoma Pueblo is a federally recognized Native American tribe that covers 431,664 acres. The spiritual hub for tribe members, a 364-foot-high mesa, affords unique views and is the site of the oldest continuously inhabited village in the United States.
Tours are available year round. Visit http://sccc.acomaskycity.org/visiting for more information.
Chesterwood
Sculptor Daniel Chester French's house in Stockbridge, Mass., isn't just a museum of the artist's work (French is best known for the sitting Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.). He also crafted several gardens in his 1898 Berkshire estate, including a woodland walk and a glade. French handled the day-to-day management of his property, which has been maintained according to his wishes.
Tours are available from May-October. Visit http://www.chesterwood.org/hidden/info.html for more information.
Drayton Hall
Although this 1738 plantation house in Charleston, S.C.. has been through seven generations of Drayton family ownership, it remains in almost original condition. Visit for the remains of John Drayton's 1747 orangery (one of the earliest documented greenhouses in the country) or the tidal river, saltwater marsh, and freshwater swamp that surround the house.
Tours are available year round. Visit http://www.draytonhall.org/visit/visitor_info/ for more information.
Montpelier
Montpelier, James and Dolley Madison's recently restored property in Orange County, Va., has housed a plantation, residences, farmland, cemeteries, a classical temple, two race courses, and, of course, gardens. Today you can see two acres of the Madison's original four-acre formal and domestic gardens, and efforts to conserve them have been going on for the last century. For a spectacular view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, history from the eighteenth century, and gardens from the twentieth, you won't go far wrong at Montpelier,
Tours are available year round. Visit http://www.montpelier.org/visit/index.php.
Belle Grove
If you're still in Virginia why not visit Belle Grove, the former home of Major Isaac Hite Jr., Madison's brother-in-law. Hite had design assistance from Thomas Jefferson in building this Shenandoah Valley plantation in Middletown, Va. which stretched 7,500 acres of grain fields, orchards, and vegetable and herb gardens. Today you will see a demonstration garden, constructed by Belle Grove's last private owner in 1929, where eighteenth and nineteenth century varieties of cutting flowers, culinary and medicinal herbs, and fruits are grown. Nearby is Heritage Orchard, which features ten varieties of trees that were favorites in Hite's time.
Tours are available from April-October. Visit http://www.bellegrove.org/ for more information.
Oatlands
Over 200 years ago George Carter designed and built Oatlands, constructing formal gardens near his home in the style of Tidewater Va. and its English antecedents. A century later William and Edith Corcoran Eustis bought the property and Edith, armed with Carter's 1768 architecture book that had inspired his design and the influence of English garden designers Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson, transformed the gardens into a wild, more natural setting. This time of year be sure to check out the magnolias.
Tours are available from March-December. Visit http://www.oatlands.org/visitoatlands/tours.asp for more information.
Cliveden
This 1767 estate just north of Philadelphia served as a refuge for British soldiers in the 1777 Battle of Germantown. Today, though, the six acres of parks surrounding Cliveden house are a peaceful oasis from nearby downtown Philly. You'll find a rare horticultural specimen on site too – the Franklinea altamaha, now extinct in the wild, a tree discovered by naturalist John Bartham in the eighteenth century.
Tours are available April-December. Visit http://www.cliveden.org for more information.
Decatur House
Commodore Stephen Decatur's 1819 Federal-style townhouse is in Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. Located just one block from the White House, Decatur and his wife, Susan were in the perfect spot to entertain the capitol's elite. Today the house remains a popular spot for social gatherings, and the small parterre garden is the perfect setting.
Tours are available year round. Visit http://www.decaturhouse.org/about/hours.htm for more information.
Cooper-Molera Adobe
A year-round blooming rose garden. A vegetable garden of artichokes, fava beans, tomatillos, and herbs. An orchard of fruit and nut trees. A towering arbor of Jeanne d'Arc roses. These are all fixtures of the Cooper-Molera Adobe, built by John Rogers Cooper in 1827 in Monterey, Calif. A sea captain, Cooper would bring back seeds and plants from his travels, in which his wife, Encarnacion Vallejo, took special joy.
The house and grounds are open year round.
Wright Houses
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature," said Frank Lloyd Wright. His style integrated architecture with natural landscape, as his three houses that are National Trust Historic Sites show. His home and studio in Oak Park, Ill., have vegetation-draped walls and native plants growing in large urns. These elements reappear at the Robie House in Chicago, where Wright's Prairie-style horizontal lines and geometric forms also echo the landscape. The windows of the Pope-Leighey house on the Woodlawn property in Richmond, Va., are placed precisely to draw in the surrounding trees.
Tours of both the Robie House and Wright's home and studio are available year round. Visit http://www.gowright.org/.
Tours of the Pope-Leighey house are available from March-December. Visit http://www.popeleighey1940.org/visit.htm.
Woodrow Wilson House
After his presidency, Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith settled themselves along Embassy Row in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in a 1915 Georgian Revival townhouse with a formal garden. The view from the house's second-floor solarium and third-floor bedrooms looked out over the different sections of the walled and terraced garden. If you visit today the garden will look the way it did during the three years Wilson lived there, thanks to a 1998 restoration.
Tours are available year-round. Visit http://www.woodrowwilsonhouse.org/.
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