Blithewood Garden Rehabilitation Project Receives Major Gift

We are delighted to announce that the Garden Conservancy has received an anonymous gift of $50,000 to support the rehabilitation of Blithewood Garden, an important Hudson Valley cultural landscape on the campus of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. The gift was made in honor of Bard alumna Betsey Ely (a member of the project team working on the rehabilitation of the garden) and her husband, JK Greenburg. 

In 2016, the Garden Conservancy began partnering with Bard College on the rehabilitation of Blithewood, a formal Italianate walled garden designed by Francis Hoppin circa 1903. It represents an important milestone in the American adaptation of the Beaux-Arts movement. The estate was one of the first to integrate the design of the landscape with the main house and the garden is one of the few complete Hudson River estate gardens from the early twentieth century that remains intact, though it is now in need of significant repairs and structural rehabilitation.

At more than 100 years old, and because it is a highly architectural garden, Blithewood is in need of immediate repairs to features that have been hard hit by the ravages of the elements and the passage of time. The Conservancy has taken an active role assisting Bard with technical support, planning, and project management of the rehabilitation project. We also facilitated the formation of the Friends of Blithewood Garden, a group of local stakeholders who are interested in the garden, preservation professionals, and other supporters who will advocate for this important project.

The generous and important new gift will go a long way toward achieving the goal of rehabilitating Blithewood.

This fall, the Garden Conservancy, the Friends of Blithewood Garden, and Bard College are co-sponsoring a 115th-anniversary celebration of Blithewood Garden, which will take place on Saturday, September 22, 2018. There will be two events: a family-focused celebration with refreshments during the daytime, followed by an evening panel discussion on “The Architectural Garden: Challenges of Preserving Formal Structures in the Landscape,” led by Garden Conservancy president James Hall. The panel will include landscape historian and author Judith Tankard; Steve Byrns, president of the Untermyer Gardens Conservancy in Yonkers, NY; and Sarah Vance, director of the Blue Garden in Newport, RI.

For more information on the rehabilitation project, please visit bardcollege.org or our Blithewood Garden page on this website.