Revisiting a celebrated garden after a long absence is like rereading a classic book.\u00a0 The second\u2014or third or fourth\u2014time around, you build on existing impressions,\u00a0 incorporate your own increased knowledge and perspective and come away with a deeper appreciation of the work.<\/p>\n
I had that experience recently when I went back to Sonnenberg Gardens, a public garden in Canandaigua, New York that I have visited four or five times over the past twenty years.\u00a0 During that time it has changed ownership, struggled financially and undergone substantial restoration.\u00a0 That process continues.<\/p>\n
The main house at Sonnenberg was built between 1885 and 1887 as a palatial summer home for a wealthy New York City-based banker and his wife.\u00a0 The Queen Anne-style house is surrounded by park-like grounds; outbuildings, including an aviary and an icehouse; and eleven garden \u201crooms\u201d created between 1903 and 1920.\u00a0 The property opened to the public in 1973 and became a New York State Historic Park in 2005.<\/p>\n
The house, complete with original or period furnishings, is open for tours.\u00a0 On this visit, I was especially impressed by the relationship of the house to the garden.\u00a0 The interior boasts beautiful woodwork, but, in keeping with the style of its time, the overall look and feel is dark and heavy.\u00a0 \u00a0Hunting trophies, like the giant set of antlers that dominates the drawing room, abound.\u00a0 Modern visitors are saved from suffocation by the fact that nearly every room overlooks or leads in some way to the gardens.\u00a0 Downstairs the main spaces open onto the generous front porch.\u00a0 Upstairs the bedrooms have large windows or balconies that bring the outside in.\u00a0 The master bedroom looks out over the \u201cItalian Garden,\u201d a sunken, European-style parterre, which is laid out so that its central axis is aligned with the downstairs library doors.\u00a0 Its four flower beds are cut in the shapes of fleur de lys and planted in multicolored annuals, a \u201ccarpet bedding scheme\u201d like those beloved of late Victorians.\u00a0 The marriage of carpet bedding with a traditional parterre is and was unusual, but it makes a wonderful picture for those in the rooms above it.<\/p>\n
My favorite garden was also the favorite of the estate\u2019s owner, Mrs. Mary Thompson.\u00a0 It is the \u201cBlue and White Garden,\u201d one of several small layouts close to the northeast corner of the house.\u00a0 It is accessible from one of the porches and, not surprisingly, features only blue, blue-purple and white flowers.\u00a0 When we visited, the little garden was fragrant with the scents of sweet alyssum, white oriental lilies and tall perennial phlox.\u00a0 Less fragrant, but no less beautiful, were tall blue delphiniums, which made me wish that the species was happier in the warmer and more humid environs of my home garden in New Jersey.<\/p>\n
Perhaps because of the current weak economy, I was struck on this visit by the financial realities of restoring and operating a place like Sonnenberg.\u00a0 Labor was relatively cheap when the property was in its glory days and now the trustees are faced with an estate full of high-maintenance layouts that were originally maintained by scores of gardeners.\u00a0 These days even rich institutions have to figure ways to simplify plantings, organize volunteer gardeners to supplement skeleton staffs of paid employees and make efficient use of modern motorized garden tools and equipment.\u00a0 When Sonnenberg became a public institution, its gardens needed substantial restoration, including stabilization of structures, clearing of overgrown vegetation, enhancement of paths and access roads and replanting of the gardens.\u00a0 Some structures, like the round, cast-concrete Temple of Diana were in such bad shape that they had to be dismantled until funding could be found for restoration.\u00a0 Diana\u2019s temple is still in pieces, but Sonnenberg has just received a major grant to restore another ruined feature, a swimming pool christened the \u201cRoman Bath.\u201d\u00a0 Long missing its original turquoise tiles, the bath has sat empty and exposed to the elements for decades.\u00a0 I hope that the next time I see the Roman Bath; it will be back in original condition.<\/p>\n
Sonnenberg Gardens is worth a detour, if you are in Central New York.\u00a0 The best parts of it, like the Old Fashioned Garden, the Rose Garden and the Japanese Garden are landscape jewels.\u00a0 The house and outbuildings are prisms through which visitors can view a time and way of life that has vanished.\u00a0 The aspirations of the twenty-first century New Yorkers who love the place are inspiring.\u00a0 As I left, I found myself wishing them luck and looking forward to my next visit.<\/p>\n
Sonnenberg Gardens is located in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State at 151 Charlotte Street, Canandaigua, New York 14424; (585) 394-4922.\u00a0 To find out more about the institution and see wonderful photos of the house and grounds, go to http:\/\/www.sonnenberg.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Revisiting a celebrated garden after a long absence is like rereading a classic book.\u00a0 The second\u2014or third or fourth\u2014time around, you build on existing impressions,\u00a0 incorporate your own increased knowledge and perspective and come away with a deeper appreciation of the work. I had that experience recently when I went back to Sonnenberg Gardens, a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[235,238,239,236,234,237,233],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-blue-and-white-gardens","tag-garden-history","tag-garden-restorations","tag-garden-rooms","tag-historic-gardens","tag-public-gardens","tag-sonnenberg-gardens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}