2025 TRADE SECRETS GARDEN TOURS

Underwriters receive early access to reserve their garden tour tickets!

All tickets will be available for purchase to the general public on April 1, 2025.

EXTRAORDINARY NEW ENGLAND GARDENS

NEW ENGLAND GARDENS of Bunny Williams & John Rosselli

Find inspiration on Saturday, May 17th at the extraordinary New England gardens of Bunny Williams and John Rosselli. 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.

Michael Trapp

  • Michael Trapp - Available to view from 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

  • 7 River Road, West Cornwall, CT 06796

  • Please Note: Capacity to this garden is limited. Tickets are sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. (Underwriters receive early access!)

On a Sharon road bordered by old farmsteads and rolling pastures where cows still graze, Michael Trapp’s place stands out. His house, dating in part from the eighteenth century, and the great barn alongside it are strikingly painted—their doors, windows, and trim colored a black-green against cream-colored clapboards. Around the house, there’s a flavor of Italianate formality, with tall columnar evergreens marshaled in straight lines, yew and thuja, not your typical New England farmyard planting. And if you happen to glance at the series of windows in the barn, a jumble of furnishings and architectural fragments are the contents hinted at, not cows. It all makes sense when you know that the owner is a designer and antique dealer with an extraordinary flair for creating vignettes of theater. This is Michael’s private garden, a place to relax, entertain, and revel in the countryside. The doors of his living room and bedroom open onto a stone terrace, with 17th c. columns supporting a grape arbor, and a picturesque view of hayfields beyond. Geometric pools of water offer reflection and a series of ‘Donald Wyman’ crabs, underplanted with variegated liriope and ‘Tide Hill’ box, lend an air of grace to the house entrance. A sense of striking simplicity pervades this garden, in essence a dramatic, unexpected frame for the setting of farmland and homestead.

Twin Maples

  • Douglas Dockery Thomas - Available to view from 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM

  • 101 Selleck Hill Road, Salisbury, CT 06068

  • Please Note: Capacity to this garden is limited. Tickets are sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. (Underwriters receive early access!)

Twin Maples is a large property with beautiful views of the Litchfield Hills. It features a Georgian style house built in the 1990’s, wildflower meadows, formal gardens, and a greenhouse surrounded by cutting beds. In the spring, visitors will enjoy the plantings of daffodils, tulips, mertensia, flowering shrubs, and a woodland garden. This historic property was a land grant to the Selleck family by King George II of England in 1746. The present owners are only the third recorded owners of the land.

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.

Innisfree Garden

Enjoy a peaceful stroll through a world-class garden in Millbrook, New York.

Nestled on 185 acres just 90 miles north of New York City, Innisfree is a quintessential American stroll garden. A remarkable synthesis of Modernist and Romantic ideals with Chinese and Japanese garden design principles, the garden harmoniously blends elements of nature with a rare sense of economy and grace. We welcome visitors to experience the beauty and tranquility of the garden from late April, when thousands of daffodils are in bloom, through early November, when the majestic fall colors reflect off the lake. Throughout the year, we offer a number of special events and programs where you can learn more about the natural world as well as the cultures and art that inspired Innisfree.