CREATING a classically inspired garden with belvedere, clipped hedge allées, elliptical pool, urns, and statuary in the aftermath of the Second World War might seem an unlikely endeavor. But it was not one to daunt Chauncey Devereux Stillman, the grandson of one of America’s richest bankers.
A keen equestrian who rode with the Millbrook Hunt, Stillman was familiar with Dutchess County, two hours north of New York City. In 1937, aged 32, he bought what he described as a ‘run-down farm’ on 400 acres of open farmland in nearby Amenia, later adding another 700 acres. He picked a magnificent site with spectacular views of the Taconic Range, the Berkshires, and the Catskills and named it Wethersfield after the Connecticut village where his ancestors had first settled on arriving in America.
Two years later, the newly married Stillman commissioned Bancel LaFarge, an established New York architect, to design a brick and brownstone Georgian Revival house and Bryan J. Lynch, a well-connected landscape architect, to create an enclosed garden at the back of the house. Lynch’s design was clearly influenced by the Arts-and-Crafts garden-style pioneered in England by Lutyens and Jekyll, which was enthusiastically adopted by American garden designers. Large beds were filled with perennials and annuals, framing a circular lawn that was bordered by a long flagstone terrace shaded by a dense arbour of grapes and trumpet vine and intersected by a rill. A pleached tunnel of amur maples, later replaced by beech, enclosed the other side of the lawn and three radial stone steps at the far end of the garden led to a raised secluded parterre.
Denne historien er fra June 23, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra June 23, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.