Chronicle on the Road: Stonecrop Gardens.
Just a few miles east of Cold Spring, these formerly private gardens are open to the public several days each week during the warm season.
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It’s been quite a week in Croton-on-Hudson, full of strife and debate over the Board of Trustee’s housing policies. So we are hoping that this coming week, which should be free of meetings by our major decision-making bodies, might be a little more calm. To start things off on the right footing, we present the second installment of this occasional feature, “Chronicle on the Road” (readers will recall that early this month we visited the Thomas Cole house in Catskill.)
Just a few miles east of Cold Spring, and only a half hour drive from Croton, sit the Stonecrop Gardens, the former home of Anne and Frank Cabot. This year the gardens are open until October 30, on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and some Sundays—meaning there are time slots for the busy and the not so busy.
Frank Cabot, a self-taught horticulturalist, was the founder of Stonecrop. The gardens, which went public in 1992, are different in many ways than your classical English or French garden, which tends towards the finely manicured and sometimes the frankly affected.
Stonecrop is a study in cultivated wildness, in which “cultivated” has a double meaning: The more than 100 plant species featured in the gardens are organized in discrete sub-gardens, each carefully designed to give the impression that they might have sprouted naturally, when in reality a huge amount of thought went into their organization (the genius behind this was the English horticulturist Caroline Burgess, who came to Stonecrop fresh from the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew in London and remains the garden director.)
From the Entrance Pavillion, where a staff member cordially welcomes you, gives you a map, and draws circles around the main attractions in a green felt pen, you can visit the Woodland Garden, the Conservatory, the Flower Garden, the Horse Barn, the Gardener’s Bothy, the Gravel Garden, the Rock Ledge, the Systematic Order Beds, the Wisteria Pavillion, the Metasequoia Grove, the Bamboo Grove, and a few other hidden features.
You will also be given a list of all 121 species (as of the day of the Chronicle’s visit) of plants found in the gardens, with common and scientific names provided. Among the attractions are Giant Solomon’s Seal, Toad Lily, Goldie’s Wood Fern, Jacob’s Ladder, Spotty Dotty, Weeping Eastern Hemlock, Bear’s Breeches, Dwarf Bouncing Bet, Mountain Madness, Miss Willmott’s Ghost, Balloon Flower, Blue False Indigo, and many other examples of the fact that botanists have vivid imaginations when they floridly name the flora they encounter.
We recommend that, before or after your visit, you visit Stonecrop’s rich and detailed Website, which includes a lengthy history of the gardens written by Burgess herself.
“Stonecrop grew literally and figuratively out of its spectacular albeit challenging site atop a rocky and windswept hill, surrounded by close woods and long, pastoral views down the Hudson Valley,” Burgess writes. “Like all cultivated landscapes, Stonecrop, however, is just as much an expression of the ideas and aspirations of the people who create and inhabit it as the native landscape from whence it sprang.”
A visit to Stonecrop Gardens does not have to be a purely passive experience. There are guided garden tours on Wednesday evenings; the remaining tours this season are on August 7 and 21, September 18, and October 16. Stonecrop also holds frequent workshops and other programs, and there are art exhibits in the Gardener’s Bothy (“Let’s Do It In the Garden,” a photo exhibit of the sex life of bugs and bloomers, is on until August 25, and an artist invitational follows from August 31 to October 30.)
So if you need a short break from trying to figure out how many apartment units can be stuffed into a former tire distribution center, or how many automobile trips will be generated by a new development in an old parking lot, come to Stonecrop. It’s a civilized place, but you will hardly know it.
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This is a fascinating article and what a great place to visit. Yes I do need a break from thinking about how many apartments can be stuffed into a tire warehouse space. Haha! I want to visit here now that I know about this thanks to the Chronicle. I love gardening and gardens. This looks like a beautiful place that offers visitors different ways to experience the grounds and plantings which is really nice. Thank you for sharing this with us!