Documentation Program

The Suzanne and Frederic Rheinstein Garden Documentation Program at the Garden Conservancy seeks to capture and to share the essence of something that is largely experiential—the beauty and stories of a garden. This presents unique challenges and requires an innovative and layered approach to create a multi-dimensional portrait of a garden, a living work of art. Our documentation program uses words and pictures, letters and notebooks, drawings and plant lists, along with stories, sounds, and experiences that have inspired garden creators. 

To document these gardens, The Garden Conservancy researches and collects a wide variety of materials, interviews individuals who play key roles in the evolution of each garden, and engages professional archivists, filmmakers, photographers, and others to assist in crafting as complete a story as possible.

The rehabilitation of Blithewood Garden is a collaborative effort between Bard College and the Garden Conservancy. The project aims to restore the garden's failing architectural features and tell stories about its national significance to ensure that this piece of living history continues to connect generations over time. 

An extraordinary early twentieth-century treasure, Blithewood Garden is an Italianate garden designed by Francis L.V. Hoppin in 1903. Located at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, Blithewood sits in the heart of the Hudson River National Historic Landmark District, stunningly framed by the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River. Francis L.V. Hoppin (1867-1941) was commissioned to re-envision Blithewood in the highly architectural style of the Gilded Era. It was one of the first estates to incorporate the design of the landscape with the main house and is a nationally significant example of a Beaux-Arts estate, representing an important milestone in American landscape design.

Free and open to the public, Blithewood welcomes over 10,000 visitors annually, where they are treated to the same views that inspired the painters of the Hudson River School.

Rocky Hills (above) embodies the creativity and extraordinary talent of the late innovative interior design executive Henriette Granville Suhr. Henriette and her husband, renowned art conservator William Suhr, began planting in the mid-1950s and created a layered garden, sensitive to the land’s history and terrain, filling it with flowering rhododendrons and azaleas, tree peonies, woodland plantings and meadows, and massings of spring-blooming bulbs. Located in Mount Kisco, NY, the garden shares an idealized version of the natural world. The garden is now in the care of the its new owners, Barbara and Rick Romeo, and is protected by a conservation easement that is held by the Westchester Land Trust.

Rocky Hills was masterfully created over half a century. Documentation of Rocky Hills has been made possible, in part, by support from Don and Fran Herdrick, long-time advocates of Henriette Suhr's garden. 

The first garden selected for our Garden Documentation Program was the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden, in Mill Neck, NY. Indeed, this was the garden that inspired the launch of the program. Created for Ambassador John Humes and designed by Douglas DeFaya, the garden is a seamless integration of Japanese landscape design with the woodland terrain of Long Island’s North Shore. The finished film "garden portrait" describing the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden can be viewed above.

We are supplementing the master garden portrait with shorter, thematic film clips on specific topics. The three short films below focus on the symbolism of bamboo deriving strength from its flexibility, on the role of the Humes Garden in its larger environment, and the spirituality embodied in the stones and design of the garden.

 

 

In 2018, the Garden Conservancy interviewed Belgian landscape designer Francois Goffinet about one of his earliest commissions: the restoration of the John P. Humes Japanese Stroll Garden in Mill Neck, NY, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Listen to a short clip from the interview:

Our work to document gardens is ongoing. We continue to interpret materials, curate the collection, interview key people, design digital presentations, and develop ways to provide easy and engaging online access. Many materials are being compiled and will be added online.

The cover story of the December 2018 issue of Garden Conservancy News provides an overview of the documentation program.