Stop One: Private Garden. Recognized as one of the “world’s ten best gardens,” it is a powerful icon of mid-20th century design. It is a collaboration between a landscape architect, artist/teacher and his wife/gardener/heiress. This garden merges the essence of Modernist ideas with traditional Chinese and Japanese garden design principles through subtle handling of the landscape and slow manipulation of its ecology.

The result is a distinctly American stroll garden — a sublime composition of rock, water, wood, and sky achieved with remarkable economy and grace. (From the garden website)

The garden was created by an American painter inspired by the work of Wang Wei, an 8th-century Chinese artist. The owner originated the term “cup garden” for the three-dimensional asymmetrical images he composed of rocks, streams, plants and flowers of varying sizes and shapes around his 40-acre natural lake.

The idea from an ancient Japanese gardening handbook called Sakuteiki or Sensai Hisho, usually translated as Secret Teachings, inspired the connection of the individual gardens with a meandering path to form one large cup garden, made up of the grounds, water, sky, cliffs and surrounding low hills. The result is a sanctuary that prizes its balance of yin and yang as much as its extensive botanical collection. (From In the Garden of Yin, Yang and Yeats by Ellen Maguire, The New York Times)

Stop Three: Private Garden. A former commercial gravel quarry, this property is two gardens in one. The house garden is a series of formal garden rooms influenced by the Italianate landscape style. The focus of each classical room ranges from ornamental trees, unique rock outcroppings, water features, a borrowed view, statuary or whimsical garden follies, all interwoven with creatively placed elements of architectural or industrial salvage.

The formal barn gardens surround a working horse farm. The stable complex is sited around a European-influenced courtyard with a prominent water feature. Although the 12 stall footprint of the barns is of new construction, the use of period woodwork, hardware, paint schemes and architectural details contribute to a modern interpretation of a 100-year-old hunt barn. Fox hunting is a pastime with deep roots in Millbrook and the families of the owners.

The gardens underscore the site’s traditional flavor but offer a contemporary twist with large scale “horse friendly” plantings, flower boxes and containers, rain gardens and other unusual remnants. (Courtesy of The Garden Conservancy)

DATE: Wednesday, October 7, 2015
PLACE: Rockaway Townsquare Mall, Rt.80 and Mount Hope Ave., Rockaway Twp, NJ.
Possible second stop: Exit 2, Rt. 84, Greenville, NY
TIME: Bus leaves 8:30am SHARP and returns approximately 7:30-8pm
COST: $70/person. Cost includes bus transportation, tip, all garden admissions and guided tours. And Mary’s home-made Rollin’ Garden Party cookies!

Register: Click here.

Questions: mary@dig-itmag.com

More Info:
www.villageofmillbrookny.com
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