2024 TRADE SECRETS GARDEN TOURS

We’ll be back in the Spring of 2025!

EXTRAORDINARY NEW ENGLAND GARDENS

NEW ENGLAND GARDENS of Bunny Williams & John Rosselli

Find inspiration on Saturday, May 18th at the extraordinary New England gardens of Bunny Williams and John Rosselli, Maywood Estate Gardens, and Lee Link. Spend your morning or afternoon enjoying the perennial borders of Bunny’s 1840’s Federal home, taking in a panoramic view of the Berkshire foothills at Maywood Estate Gardens, or discovering an array of tropicals in the greenhouse of Lee Link.

The property of Bunny Williams and John Rosselli encompasses twelve acres of varied gardens, including woodland, vegetable, parterre, orchard, perennial borders and many container displays that surround the 1840’s Federal home. A mowed path through the orchard and meadow leads to the pool house, a Greek Revival folly made with rustic, locally harvested oak columns. Uphill from the pool is Bunny’s Studio: an inspiring contemporary place with an impressive view of the Berkshire Hills. From the Studio, paths weave their way through the Woodland Garden, past carpets of ferns, wildflowers, woodland peonies, and an understory of dogwoods and redbuds. The Woodland Garden opens up into Elizabeth’s Circle, a contemplative and calming space where large boxwood balls tumble down the hill from the woods edge. Stone steps lead down to the Parterre, located behind the Conservatory and guest barn. Brick walkways, covered in moss, are surrounded by patterned boxwood hedges that edge seasonally planted beds, allowing for a different color scheme each year. Beyond the Conservatory, which showcases tropicals, a pergola leads visitors around the main house to a series of Belgian-style swooped yew hedges that frame a mass planting of hydrangeas. Just past the hedges is a sunken garden, filled with bold mixed borders and box-edged beds, brimming with perennials, annuals, and bulbs, including a granite edged koi pond. In the middle of the property is also a vegetable & cutting garden; a great variety of organic vegetables and herbs are grown along with tulips, peonies and dahlias from spring through fall in symmetrically designed square beds, edged with antique terracotta tile. Unused produce makes its way to the chickens, which are housed in an extraordinary octagonal coop. Visitors will most likely have the pleasure of meeting Bunny and John, as they enjoy sharing their garden with their guests.

Maywood Estate Gardens

Maywood is a private estate located in the southern tip of Litchfield County, Connecticut. Classic architecture combined with several traditional gardens grace the property and its panoramic view of the Berkshire foothills. The gardens immediately surrounding the main residence are formally structured, and lead out to more naturalized gardens and woodland trails. Various production gardens are integrated into the forty-acre landscape, providing fresh cut flowers, vegetables, and field crops.

Page Dickey’s Garden

  • Page Dickey’s Garden (Underwriter Exclusive - Patron level and up) - Available to view from 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM

A gravel path cuts through a garden of native and non-native perennials and shrubs in front of Church House—the 18th c. Methodist church that is now our home. Species roses should be in bloom around the patterned cutting garden in back of the house. Mowed paths strike off through meadows that embrace the garden, leading to trails in our woods—on the west side, high and rocky with marble outcroppings, on the east side, low, damp and fern-filled. A boardwalk allows you to walk through a small fen, a calcareous wetland rich with native shrubs and wildflowers. The 17 acre property is not deer-fenced, so we share the garden with deer (as well as rabbits and voles), and more happily with friends.

 

REMARKABLE MILLBROOK GARDEN TOURS

Explore the beauty of Millbrook, New York with three of the state’s finest gardens - Clove Brook Farm, the private estate of Christopher Spitzmiller and Anthony Bellomo, Heather Croner’s Sharpstone Farm Gardens, and Wethersfield Estate & Gardens. Spend your Saturday gathering inspiration for your own garden creations by taking in the site of Clove Brook Farm’s neoclassical style pool house and reflecting pool, enjoying the poetic design of Sharpstone Farm Gardens’ meadows and spring-fed ponds, or exploring one of the finest examples of an Italian Renaissance garden that is Wethersfield.

The garden at Clove Brook Farm was begun in 2014 following a full restoration of the circa 1830s Greek Revival farmhouse on the property. The garden has quickly grown into a series of interconnected spaces, beginning with a horseshoe-shaped garden near the house that is surrounded by a clipped hornbeam hedge and anchored by a dovecote. It's this garden where a spectacular show of tulips and sweet peas emerges in spring, followed by towering dahlias in late summer. A few years ago another large garden "room" was added which centers on an oval swimming pool and neoclassical style pool house. This garden is also bounded by a hornbeam hedge and includes perimeter beds filled with various herbaceous perennials which evolve throughout the growing season, starting with poppies in early spring, then peonies, roses, lilies, and finally dahlias. A large kitchen garden has also been added, designed in a formal style, and planted with a large variety of vegetables during the growing season. The garden continues to evolve as embellishments to the formal garden spaces are added, and informal and naturalistic plantings are installed at the edge of the property. The evolution of the garden has been documented in A Year at Clove Brook Farm (Rizzoli, 2021), with foreword by Martha Stewart.

Sharpstone Farm Gardens

Reflecting eighteenth-century English design sensibilities for long views and circular forms, this stroll garden incorporates meadows, a steep valley, streams, a waterfall, and a series of spring-fed ponds. Long, pastoral views give way to established perennial gardens in both shade and sun. Naturalistic in style with a preference for native woodland plants, the rhythm of this landscape is at once peaceful and pleasurable. The garden has evolved in such a way to complement the architecture of the outdoor spaces.

Photography Credit: Ngoc Minh Ngo

Wethersfield Estate & Gardens

Wethersfield Estate & Garden occupies 1,000 acres in northeast Dutchess County, where it is the highest point in the region with an elevation of 1,200 feet. From that vantage point, it offers majestic views of the Berkshires, the Catskills and the Taconic Hills. Comprised of a Georgian-style house–classical gardens, a carriage house, and a farm, Wethersfield Estate & Garden is generally considered to be one of the finest examples of Italian Renaissance gardens in the United States. Founded by Citigroup heir, philanthropist and investor, Chauncey Stillman, in 1938, Wethersfield Estate & Garden is now a non-profit organization devoted to the proper stewardship of land, habitat protection, conservation, culture, and the arts. Wethersfield hosts a diversity of formal and native-inspired garden spaces, such as an Arts and Crafts English perennial garden, cut flower garden, hedged yew topiaries and mature tree specimens, and 20 miles of trails for equestrian activities and hiking. Wethersfield strives to integrate the latest horticultural knowledge to maintain a sustainable and historical garden in a changing world. Wethersfield Estate & Garden is on the National Register of Historic Places and was awarded the 2021 New York State Historic Preservation Award for Excellence in Historic Landscape Preservation.