The Cross Estate Gardens, Bernardsville, NJ

Surrounded by the national park at Jockey Hollow, this lovingly tended estate garden features a walled garden, a wildflower garden, a brick and timber pergola smothered with wisteria a white clematis as well as an unusual alle of Kalmia latifolia. It is maintained by volunteers and is a magical place. Last year the house and grounds were the site of a designer show house and gardens so it got some addtional umph!. Talk about under visited, I have often been the only person there.

Stan Hywet Hall & Garden in Akron, OH

http://www.stanhywet.org/

very lovely...

The entire city of Victoria, BC, Canada ... it's one big garden! Simply beautiful every where you go.

Besides the well-known Butchart Gardens of course (which are a little overblown, but a wonderful sensory experience for color sluts), the Hatley Castle and Gardens at the Royal Roads Military College is quite nice, if small. Amazing what is grown less than 100 yards from the ocean. The attached photo doesn't do it justice. The Abkhazi Garden is also lovely. So are the vast majority of resident's front yards.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hatley Castle, Victoria BC

The Fells web address:

www.thefells.org

Innisfree in Millbrook, NY

Kingswood in Mansfield, Ohio.

Can you add a word or two about Kingswood? That is new to me and maybe some others.

There are two, albeit restored, nineteenth century gardens in Washington state that are of special interest. One is a [semi-] formal vegetable/flower garden outside the palisade at Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, the other is a small formal garden at English Camp, the site of a former British garrison on San Juan Island.

I've posted a couple of photos of the Fort Vancouver garden in the gallery.

Lets see, Kingswood was built by a rich guy in the 20's, has a French chat. type house that has a great gardening reference library (you can only borrow the books if you live in the county. has a small gift shop. rose garden. great spring bulbs, day lilies, mums , hostas. has plant sales. They raise maney of their own plants. Everything is labled nicely. It's free and open to the public. I think they might have a web site. It is right off US30. Mansfield also has a carosel in the downtown and a carosel horse museum and factory where they carve them by hand.

Here are the web sites for the kingwood center. www.kingwoodcenter.org Âinfo@kingwoodcenter.org

Why are there so many gardens associated with forts? Seems an unusual place to have a garden, other than vegetable or other agricultural plantings. The garden historian I heard speak this winter had published a book on the restoration of Ft Ticonderoga's gardens in NY State. I was surprised.
Now John has mentioned two more.
G.

The House of the Seven Gables (New England's oldest surviving wooden mansion, ca. 1668) has a charming garden that is considered authentic Jacobean period (mid and late 17th century). While it has undergone transformations with each new chief gardener, it is considered to have maintained its authenticity.

Here is a link that might be useful: House of Seven Gables garden

Ginger:
This might go back to the castle gardens of Europe, where beautiful gardens were often laid out on top of bastions. One of the better American examples are the gardens of Alcatraz, first planted in the nineteenth century, when "The Rock" was an Army fortress. I'll see if I can dig out some pics and post them.

My favorite: Virginia House in Richmond, VA (named after the mistress, not the commonwealth). The house was originally a 12th century English monastary and moved to Virginia in the 1920s. The 8 acre garden was designed by Charles Gillette, VA's finest landscape architect in the early 20th century. There are multiple terraced gardens overlooking the James River and the viewshed has been wonderfully protected by a country club across the river. You cannot see another building in the view, so its hard to believe you are in the middle of a city. Beautifully arranged gardens. I will confess that I have a strong personal interest in this garden, since I lived on the property for six years (the last person to do so) and got to see the garden in all its intimate moments. Still it is a fantastic garden and not heavily visited.

Other great historic gardens:
Agecroft in Richmond - also moved from England and the gardens and house now interpret Engilsh history.
Maymont in Richmond - built in the late 1890s, it includes a large estate that is now a city park. Beautiful Italian and Japanese style gardens well maintained.
Tryon Palace in New Bern, NC is that state's colonial capitol. It has a large and very pretty colonial revival garden. The complex also includes several houses dating from the 1700s to 1890 so there is a gamut of small historical gardens. Again I have a personal interest in this site as I was the Curator/Landscape Superintendent for 7 years and was directly involved in several restoration projects there.
Cupola House in Edenton, NC - the garden itself is very modest, but Edenton has so many beautiful private gardens nearby that are visible from the street that this is my favorite town for visiting just to see the gardens.

Some great landscapes but not "gardens" that have beautiful flowers, etc. would include Somerset in Creswell, NC, Orton Plantation outside of Wilmington, NC and Drayton Hall and Middleton Plantation, both outside Charleston, SC. All are large landscapes that have fascinating histories and are amazinglying well kept. Unfortunately, I don't think any of them give enough interpretation on their landscapes, so it is helpful if you know a little bit about them and landscape design/history before you visit.

Thanks, John. Will look forward to any photos or other information you may have.
G.

Ginger:
I looked for some of the garden/bastion/castle photos I took in Europe but discovered that most of them are still on slides, since I haven't had the time to convert them to digital. But I found a few and posted them in the gallery under Castles 1 and Castles 2

John-
Lovely photos. The Alcatraz photos are especially arresting. I wonder if women and children lived there with their "menfolk."

I did a quick web review of Fort Ticonderoga and Forts Vancouver and Victoria, both part of the Hudson Bay Trading Co. empire. It seems there is a difference(quite obvious now that I understand that all forts are not military!)in the sorts of gardens we are speaking of.

The early military forts had only vegetable gardens to produce food for the men. Later, in the late 1800's-early 1900's, when the forts were restored for tourism, ornamental gardens were added to enhance the visitor's time at the fort. Even later(now), these ornamental gardens are being restored, along with the original, practical vegetable gardens.

The Hudson Bay forts were centers of commerce and culture, rather than primarily military centers, and hence had ornamental as well as vegetable/crop gardens from the start. The Forts Victoria and Vancouver sites have excellent excerpts from the diaries and other writings of people who lived there at the time, including quite a bit on the ornamental gardens.

Leads me to wonder if the European bastion gardens were created and tended from the time the fortresses/castles were built, much like the Hudson Bay fort gardens. This was a way of life, the castle as a way to protect what was the lord's; not a military outpost but the center of everyday life.

Just thinking out loud without enough time to delve into this properly. Business is getting started early this year; doing up designs and plant lists already. Anyone out there with the answers to these questions at the ready? Garden historians?

Thanks so much, John, for those photos. You must have a magnificent library of both the printed word and photos.

Ginger

Gardens associated with forts/castles shouldn't be so unusual. Castle were seats for nobility, the people who would have "gardens" in the first place.

Gardens in American forts would not be unusal either. There is a strong early connection between medicine and botany. Doctors would study plants for medicinal reasons and therefore many would be avid gardeners or plantsmen. Even Linnaeus studied medicine, just so he could spend time studying plants. When the Pacific northwest was explored by Vancouver, it was the ship's surgeon, Alexander Menzies, who did all the botanizing during the expedition. Since many military installations had doctors that is one reason a garden might be attached.

Also, early Govenors and military men generally came from European gentry, where gardening was the norm. Some men might have had an interest, and spending time in the New world would have been a chance to collect some new plants.

Also, some of these men were asked to provide plants and other natural history "curisoties" to patrons in Europe. Estabilishing a garden would have been a good way to gather plants before shipping them to Europe. A good example that I can think of would have been Governor William Tryon (governor of both North Carolina and New York). He sent plants to Oatlands and items to the crown, including a live panther to King George! Tryon didn't even have much of an interest in gardening, but its was common practice to provide patrons or people who had political connections these gifts. However, Tryon's predecessor in NC, Arthur Dobbs, was an avid plantsman himself and was renowned for the garden he developed at his residence in NC. Unfortunately it no longer exists. By the way, he is the person credited with the discovery of the Venus Flytrap.

That reminds me - there is a castle right here on the North Shore of Massachusetts that has charming gardens, including a courtyard somewhat like the one at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston. It has nice plantings and is decorated with medieval architectural remnants and statuary.

It's open to the public, and there are even "Renaissance faires" and historical re-enactment events there.

Click on the "Photos" link on their website, and you'll see some shots of the courtyard garden.

Here is a link that might be useful: castle courtyard

Yes, families of several Alcatraz employees (not inmates) lived on the island. A year or so ago, I saw an American Experience-type TV show that featured the adult children who had grown up there. It was very interesting--wish I could pass on further details. Maybe someone else has a better memory than I do!

I saw a program on HGTV about it. Here's a link to the archived summary of the show.

Here is a link that might be useful: Alcatraz gardens

That is quite amazing. Reminds me of the gardens and crop fields at the State Mental Hospital in the town where I grew up in Western NY State. Both my parents worked there at some point in their lives, as did most of the people in town.

The patients worked in the flower beds and tended the long rows of glads, along with raising the food for the hospital, milking the cows, etc. A self-sustaining community. Hort therapy before it was labeled as such.

Ginger,
My uncle was a physician for many years at a state "mental" hospital in eastern Massachusetts. He and my aunt were given a house to live on, right on the hospital grounds, and my father often took my brothers and me to visit with his sister (my aunt). Up until the early 1970s, the patients (at least, the ones who were able) ran a farm on the hospital campus. They had Holstein dairy cows, pigs, a grove of butternut trees, and huge vegetable gardens. Sometimes when we visited, my brothers and I were allowed to help pick acorn squash in the field, or watch the dairy cows get milked and fed in the barn.

It was impressive that the work of the hospital patients provided more than half the food for the patients and staff, maintained the fields, and basically ran a full-fledged farm. On top of that, they maintained the campus around the buildings, including the lawns, shrubs, trees and flowers.

Try Hamilton House in South Berwick, ME, about 10 miles from Portsmouth NH. There are lovely gardens surrounding the historic home, an SPNEA house. The parking and gardens are free, but the house tour is $5. You have to find the place off Route 236, so I included a link below to SPNEA. The gardens have gone through a transformation since local garden designer and friend, Nancy Wetzel, updated the historic gardens. Sometimes I just go there to sit on the hill overlooking the tidal river. Gardens and house are so beautiful that the picture on line doesn't do them justice.

Right next to the house is the Vaughan Woods. We've had magical experiences walking those woods, from a swarm of honeybees buzzing by to watching Ospreys diving into the water to catch fish, to a salamander skittering through the underbrush.

Guess I've got spring fever!

Here is a link that might be useful: Hamilton House gardens

A favorite of mine is Cypress Gardens In Moncks Corner SC. about thirty miles north of Charleston SC. A unique garden especially beautiful during the southern spring. Mixture of cypress swamp and abandoned rice plantation. A fun and interesting tour, is the flat bottom boat tours through the swamp. Great examples of old Indica Azaleas and forgotten Southern Woodies used to landscape the South in the past. A few ruins as well from the antebellum days.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cypress Gardens

Cady-
Something else we have in common . . . amazing! We'll have to talk about this when we get together again.

Just went to a meeting of Master Gardeners at the cooperative extension office this morning. New project for 2004 is going to be a demonstration garden that will also provide food for the local county home for the elderly, perhaps the county jail, too. Tended by juveniles in a court diversion program, maybe some of the elders who are able, and MGs; prisoners may help with initial tilling and making signs for the project. The soil is very fertile as it was once the county farm (maybe that was the term for the county "poorhouse?") Anyway, things tend to cycle around, don't they?

Ginger

PS Still going to e-mail you about the bamboo . . .

Prison gardens, state hospital gardens... and their preservation as historical places. There's a topic to consider.

The state mental hospital where my uncle worked is now being turned into luxury apartments or condos, a light industry center, home for the regional headquarters of Special Olympics, and open space. There was a huge bruhaha in the town about maintaining the original buildings for their architectural historic interest, and the developers have been dancing a fragile two-step with the town council. But, it looks like the development will happen.

I do miss the gardens and farm. But even more, it was a travesty when the state closed most of the mental hospitals in the 1970s, and thousands of patients were turned out on the streets. Many of them were schizophrenic or had other conditions that made them unable to live "normal" lives. The population of homeless, mentally ill people suddenly spiked in surrounding cities when the hospitals were closed.

If you EVER go to San Francisco--you've got to go to Alcatraz. Wear a coat! It's FREEZING--even in July. We had a GREAT time..and the kids (who were much younger then) learned a lot.

melanie

This is a little OT, but on the subject of hospital gardens--While doing research several years ago, I found an old magazine photo of the grounds at Danvers State Mental Hospital here in MA. The photo was taken in the 1890s when the buildings, true Victorian Gothic, were in pristine condition. The grounds had enormous displays of annuals in the Victorian bedding-out design. It was quite fantastic.

The hospital fell on hard times and is now closed and I believe there is an argument about what to do with the site. The kicker is that the grounds were the seventeenth century site of what was then called Salem Village, where the entire witchcraft episode broke out in 1692. The girls who made the original accusations etc. lived in Salem Village--then it spread throughout Essex County. The trials were in the present-day city of Salem, some miles away. But it still gives me the creeps to go by that hill, with the remains of Danvers State looming in the distance. No more annuals there now.

Ginny,
Danvers State Hospital is the one I was talking about -- where my uncle worked, where we "helped" on the patients' farm. lol
As I wrote, it's being developed for a number of uses. There was a lot of controversy because the Danvers town council was very picky. They wanted to preserve the Kirkbride building, which is a gothic looking old structure that makes me think "haunted," and wanted the developer to preserve and work around that building for historic preservation reasons.

Cady, I never made the connection. Thanks for the info. Are they saving the building? Wasn't sure from your post. It really is architecture worthy of preservation. If they do, how wonderful it would be to see a real Victorian garden there once again.

Ginny, I've been following the updates in the local paper... You can too, if you do a Google search to find the Salem News online edition. Every few weeks they usually have an article about what's going on at the site.

The basic scoop -- a big developer, the Archstone Corporation had the winning bid for the development of the hospital campus, but the stipulation was that they had to preserve the Kirkbride (that's the big gothic main building). Archstone had its engineers do an initial check of the structure, and reported that with some minor adjustments they could preserve the building.

After Archstone got the deal, though, they proposed a plan radically different from their original. Now, they claimed that the age and degree of decrepitude of the Kirkbride would make it impossible to save anything but the front facade. The Danvers town council was outraged (as were many residents). On top of that, relatives of some of the patients who had died and were buried on the campus were very concerned that any development plans that go through must honor and preserve the modest cemetery.

The deal was just a big mess. Archstone dropped out. Another company (the name eludes me right now) took it up and apparently has provided a plan that preserves the Kirkbride exterior and its main interior structure... but with major renovations.

There are supposed to be lots of new condo buildings, plus use of the Kirkbride and neighboring brick buildings, but I don't know what those uses will be. I presume offices and/or more housing.

I drive by there quite regularly, and have always been taken by the beauty of the setting and the drama of the campus structures. I hope that any development that is undertaken preserves the dignity of the place, and its lush green setting.