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The White Garden of Whimsy
by Mary Jasch
Walk through the woods down the dirt lane to a grand private house and gardens. This is the White Estate, a showcase of nature and art, where over 800,000 narcissi bloom in the Woodland Garden with 50 kinds of ferns. Great swaths of color spread through the deciduous woods - 200 varieties, 500 each. Every year, Eric Schmidt and his crew add 8 to 10,000 more. Take a path or two into the woods and find the wild yellow trout lily sprouting in abundance near the blooming bulbs. Surprises greet the walker in this 45-acre garden designed by Patrick Chasse. On April 24, this private estate garden will be open to the public for self-guided tours, one of the season's first in The Garden Conservancy's Open Days Program.
Two lionesses guard the guesthouse on the right, converted in 1976 from an old cow barn. Twenty-year-old climbing hydrangea grows luxuriantly around the house. Moss plays a major role here in both lawn and garden in the woods, where a Japanese warrior guards the moss that Schmidt tends.“It's very labor intensive to keep the weeds down and the moss in place," he says. During heavy rains the shallow-rooted moss floats, trees drop leaves on it and skunks root it up looking for grubs. But Schmidt is vigilant and the Sotheby warrior stands proud. Nearby, native False Hellebore, or Indian Poke, Veratrum viride, has plaited leaves and grows with Skunk-cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, along the stream and low areas, adding greenness to the wood's floor. The crew tends the forest trees. They've recently trimmed out the dead branches “to keep them in good shape."
Schmidt says it's not as nonchalant as it looks. Although the flowers are bright and perky, they don't always survive, especially in a wet area. “Once a daffodil dies in an area, don't plant any daffodils there again," he advises. "They won't grow. 'Wings of Freedom,' a small yellow with sweptback petals, does well in these moist spots. Although most of the gardens were completely refurbished eight years ago, the daffodil-covered forest was begun 25 years ago.
To get to the main house and a series of smaller, more cultivated gardens, pass the thickly planted Mon Cherie and Las Vegas - a show girl of a daffodil on the left bank. A hemlock hedge shelters the house from the drive. Walk up the wide slab steps of Pennsylvania rock through Christmas fern fiddleheads, emerging Lamium and watchful gargoyles. Sentinels, two Norway Spruce followed by two marble vessels on rock pedestals, establish a mysterious air as the house comes into view with two Alberta spruce in metal urns on either side of the door. It is modern and clean with a feel of Greek. Formal with a twist.
Then the visitor steps down into fantasy: a Circle Garden like a Greek amphitheatre. One descends through concentric layers of hemlock, rhododendron, and a brick stage around an ornate Italian wellhead and bases of white Verona marble. A stationary audience appears everywhere: Zeus, Socrates, John Paul Jones. The garden's owners collect busts and sculpture in their travels and have placed them here among the rhododendron. Three paths lead to other gardens, and glimpses entice the voyeur. “The whole place is Greek Revival and the gardens are meant to reflect that," says Schmidt. “It's a playground for adults. The owners have a sense of humor and it's reflected in the garden. You'll see what I mean."
A moss path through a stand of bamboo leads to the Conservatory Garden, which is prime in summer when castor bean and Datura accent waterlilies. Now, 19th-century Livia complements Star Magnolia. The water garden is black with tadpoles in June, says Schmidt. The path gets so covered he closes the garden.
Numerous places to walk afford new sights such as paper birch, a treat for southerly folk, and a planter with moss.
Walk back to the Circle Garden and alongside the cedar house, with an essence of columns here, to the Master Garden. Chess, anyone? There, on the lawn in front of columns on this side of the house, is a board game with a two-foot tall army of smiling chessmen waiting for fun. This secret place is protected from view by a yew labrynthe.
From the Circle, take the path to the oval Perennial Garden with four French Maidens of “The Four Seasons." Continue on to the Annual Garden where 10,000 tulips are planted each year, timed to bloom on Mother's Day. Annuals replace them. A limestone temple sits grandly by as the visitor walks through native azalea, hellebore, rhododendron and in summer, heliotrope, toward the Main Terrace with pool and pergola.
Leafy Concord grape and trumpet vines cover the pergola in summer. Transplanted old apple trees live on the flagstone terrace near the house. Beyond the pool is a round window with water. It's the top of a nymphaeum, best experienced from below. Walk around the blue-water pool and down the hillside through heather and sprawling shrubbery to a built Koi pond with a waterfall. No chemicals are used here; instead, six sunken vortexes with gravel and brushes keep it all clean.
Walk across the stepping stones to the nymphaeum. It's fun! Into the deep, like entering a below-ground aquarium, where one can sit and watch the water creatures, in this case, humans, in the pool. The nymphaeum is at pool-bottom level and its walls and ceiling are covered with fabricated rock, molded from rocks in the landscape. The floor is a mosaic of squid, seashells and fish. Swallows built nests in here, just a day after completion, says artist Stephen Brois of Unique Artistic who cast the rocks in his Yonkers' shop, brought them back and pieced them in. “It's a collage," he says.
Out into the sunlight again, saunter over the sweeping lawn, so cleanly tended it's like a golf course. The eye travels down to the big pond, man-made and surrounded by a stone wall. Brave the geese, but watch the swans, and walk across the water on big rocks to one of the islands. There, among the shrubbery, stands Temple d' Amour, a 19th-century gazebo from the South of France with carved marble columns and benches and a wrought iron dome.
The house from this side beams over the landscape. It is master and lord of the Lewisboro landscape.
Stop in the computerized Greenhouse. Schmidt can relax at home and, via computer, mist plants, work the shades, vents, and lights and monitor temperature and humidity. They grow all their own annuals here, and a small collection of orchids and a few tropicals.
The White Garden
199 Elmwood Road, Lewisboro
Westchester County
For information on the White Garden and other Open Days private gardens:
The Garden Conservancy or 845-265-5384
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published April 22, 2004
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