Doris Duke—1912-1993—was a millionaire heiress with multiple homes, a colorful personal life and a peripatetic nature. Whenever she touched down in New Jersey, she came to rest at Duke Farms, a property established by her father in the state’s central region. In Duke’s time, the mammoth greenhouses at Duke Farms contained a series of themed … Read more
Italian writer Andrea di Robilant has long been a man in search of the past. He mined a rich vein of family history in Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon, the 2008 biography of his ancestor Lucia Mocenigo, a late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Venetian aristocrat and friend of the French … Read more
I have a friend of the clerical persuasion who is a wonderful gardener. When I say “wonderful”, I don’t mean that his suburban lot looks like Longwood Gardens. I mean that when he sets his mind to growing something well, it grows exceptionally well. This is because he understands the “why” of gardening as well … Read more
For years I have called myself a rose lover, but I have completely neglected a significant category of old roses. Finally, this summer, a plantsman of my acquaintance called me on it. “How,” he said, “could you not grow alba roses?” Of course, I made all the usual excuses, mostly having to do with the … Read more
Great gardens have much in common with other works of art—form, color, structure, light, space and an indefinable “something” that draws viewers in. Unlike other masterpieces, however, gardens are ephemeral. Any gardener can tell you what happens when you leave a landscape untended for even a month. Lines blur, thuggish plants grow large while less … Read more
