{"id":911,"date":"2013-10-07T07:31:19","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T15:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=911"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:04","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:04","slug":"stonecrop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/stonecrop\/","title":{"rendered":"Stonecrop"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Francis H. Cabot died in 2011 at the age of 86, New York Times<\/em> obituary writer Margalit Fox credited him with creating \u201ctwo of the most celebrated gardens in North America.\u201d\u00a0 Last weekend, when the temperature and weather were close to perfect, I visited one of them, Stonecrop Gardens, near Cold Spring, NY.<\/p>\n

Born into a wealthy family, Cabot spent his early career on Wall Street nurturing the family business.\u00a0 But he found a calling and claim to fame in nurturing gardens.\u00a0 In addition to creating irresistible landscapes at Stonecrop and his Quebec property, Les Quatres Vents; Cabot founded the Garden Conservancy, an organization that helps preserve and sustain unique and historic landscapes. \u00a0The Conservancy started in 1989, with one property, the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek, California.\u00a0 Almost twenty-five years later, the non-profit Conservancy has helped scores of gardens and those who care for them make the transition from private to public status.<\/p>\n

Gardens are ephemeral things; most do not and probably should not survive their makers.\u00a0 But a few, like Longue Vue in New Orleans and Van Vleck Gardens, in Montclair, New Jersey, are worthy of preservation for future generations.\u00a0 Thanks to Frank Cabot and the small army of garden lovers he inspired, paths to preservation have been identified and resources mustered.\u00a0 Celebrated gardens have found new life and great gardeners have been able to hand over the reins of their creations, secure in the knowledge that unique gardens would be loved and cared for.<\/p>\n

Frank Cabot\u2019s creation at Stonecrop is also unique and personal.\u00a0 Even now, over twenty years after Cabot and his wife, Anne, stopped living there, the garden retains their spirit and imprint.\u00a0 The day my husband and I visited, all the fall flowers were blooming in gorgeous, enormous abundance.\u00a0 In the overflowing beds and borders closest to the former Cabot house and outbuildings, the dahlias alone were worth the trip.\u00a0 My old friend, the deep red, dark-leafed dahlia \u2018Bishop of Llandaff\u2019 pulsated in the late September light, as did the others, too numerous, colorful and exotically named to count.\u00a0 Giant clumps of tall asters were literally abuzz with all kinds of bees in the midst of a fall frenzy.\u00a0 So many of the plants towered over me that I felt Lilliputian by comparison.<\/p>\n

The garden\u2019s name, \u201cStonecrop,\u201d is a play on words.\u00a0 \u201cStonecrop\u201d is the common name of a low-growing sedum, often cultivated in the kind of troughs, alpine houses and gravel gardens found at the Stonecrop estate.\u00a0 The grounds are laden with massive stony ledges or outcroppings, another kind of \u201cstonecrop,\u201d and Cabot made liberal use of them in his grand design.\u00a0 One of my favorite parts of the landscape is the Rock Ledge, watered by trickling streams and planted with alpines, dwarf conifers and Mediterranean plants.\u00a0 The Rock Ledge overlooks the Hillside Garden and Lake, both manmade, but in perfect harmony with the surrounding landscape.\u00a0 Looking up from just about anywhere in the gardens, you can see the tall dawn redwoods \u2013 Metasequoia glyptostroboides \u2013 which were only planted in 1986, but are already growing into pillars that tower over the rest of the garden.<\/p>\n

Whimsy is omnipresent in a Cabot garden.\u00a0 As depicted in Frank Cabot\u2019s memorable book, The Greater Perfection, <\/em>the layout at Les Quatres Vents is home to topiaries clipped to resemble, among other things, giant green bread loaves.\u00a0 Copper frogs the size of adult humans sometimes pipe music to garden guests.\u00a0 At Stonecrop, one of their froggy copper relatives greets visitors from a perch in the Wisteria Pavilion at the foot of the Hillside Garden.<\/p>\n

As a rose lover, I am fond of the Bramble Ramble, an area beyond the Asian-inflected Rock Ledge, Hillside Garden and Pavilion.\u00a0 The Ramble is home to various old-fashioned rose types that need space for their expansive growth habits.\u00a0 Very few were in bloom when we visited, though several were showing off impressive displays of brilliantly colored hips.\u00a0 I saw one of my favorite varieties, the hybrid musk \u2018Buff Beauty\u2019 from the nineteen thirties.\u00a0 A nice specimen of \u2018Great Maiden\u2019s Blush\u2019 waited to blush next spring.<\/p>\n

At Stonecrop the end of the growing season is one long, dramatic exuberant crescendo.\u00a0 When we were there, nothing had been cut back yet and birds, butterflies, dragonflies and skippers danced over the landscape in a great end-of-season gala.\u00a0 The light was golden and the sense of joyous fruition was infectious.\u00a0 I think Frank Cabot would be pleased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Francis H. Cabot died in 2011 at the age of 86, New York Times obituary writer Margalit Fox credited him with creating \u201ctwo of the most celebrated gardens in North America.\u201d\u00a0 Last weekend, when the temperature and weather were close to perfect, I visited one of them, Stonecrop Gardens, near Cold Spring, NY. Born … 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":[206,658,563,234,660,659,662,661,657,663],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-dahlias","tag-frank-cabot","tag-garden-conservancy","tag-historic-gardens","tag-hudson-highlands","tag-landmark-gardens","tag-les-quatres-vents","tag-stonecrop","tag-stonecrop-gardens","tag-the-greater-perfection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","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=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":912,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}