Earlier this week we explored the newly restored inside of The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Berkshires house. Now it’s time to explore the motives! Wharton completed a European grand tour and then written a book called Italian Villas and Their Gardens that was published in 1904. She designed the formal gardens in The Mount herself to create a space between the home and the house’s woodlands, meadows and lake. Her niece, the famous landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, was also involved with the plan of their grounds. Here’s a look.
More: Take a tour in the Home
In Italian Villas and Their Gardens, Wharton observes”The Italian state house… was nearly always constructed on a hillside, and one afternoon the architect appeared forth from the terrace of his villa, and saw that, in his survey of the backyard, the enclosing landscape was naturally included: the two formed a part of the exact same composition.”
In keeping with her ideas about the siting of Italian country villas and their connection to the gardens, Wharton put the home on a rock outcropping to take in the views of town, and beyond to Laurel Lake.
Allium, women mantle and astilbe are merely a couple of the perennials that create the undulating lines within the borders of their flower garden. We are going to get over there in an instant.
This reveals the proper axial plan of the home and gardens. The relationship between the landscape and the home was always a priority for Wharton since she designed the house.
The formal garden on the right would be the flower garden, which Wharton seen from her bedroom window. The garden on the left is a sunken secret garden.
The stables, seen from the primary street. The approach to the house was created by Wharton’s niece, Beatrix Jones Farrand, who proceeded to become one of the most prominent landscape architects in the usa.
Farrand designed the entrance sequence in three components. The first part is an 800-foot long directly allee of sugar maples. It passed an extensive kitchen garden she designed adjoining to the gatehouse (seen through the fog in this picture) that no longer exists. Additionally, it passed out a greenhouse and the stables. Beyond those outbuildings it contributes through the forests.
Next the street curves through beautifully designed woodlands, passing two over a picturesque flow and small mounded hills.
Wharton implanted ferns and periwinkle widely alongside the second portion of the entry approach street.
Winding around part three of the plan, a last curve leads people to a walled forecourt and the entry to the home.
From in the forecourt, an opening also contributes to an alternate house entry, a curved path. I had been drawn as if by a magnet to this choice when I visited (rather than entering the home right there), even though it was raining.
This path leads over the hillside and around the left side of their home…
… into the veranda.
Grassed terraces lead down in the center of the veranda into a long cross-axis, which is lined with linden trees and contributes to formal gardens in both end.
The border of each terrace is punctuated by hemlock hedges and clipped arbor vitae.
A view looking back the axis up into the home. Wharton knew that Italian gardens had been”a prolongation of the home.” This designed landscape navigates a formal darkened distance between the home and the wilderness beyond.
Here’s a view down the linden walk into the flower garden. A trellised market marks the visual end of the axis, providing a backdrop for Wharton’s dolphin fountain based before it.
Here is a closer look in the fountain. This backyard is more French-inspired compared to Italian. Italian gardens were less about flowers and more about shapes and materials such as stone, sculptural trees — both natural and trimmed — and ornaments like figurines.
Based upon Wharton’s intents, more than 3,000 annuals and perennials are planted in the flower garden as part of their extensive restoration of their property.
Beyond the fountain, a path that leads into the evergreens and forth to the remainder of the less formal grounds. This is a good example of the proper gardens prolonging the home and making a transitional space into less tamed regions of the property.
Exiting the flower garden and looking down the 300-foot-long linden-lined walk, one has a hint of the sunken walled garden in the other end.
Again, the slope is navigated by means of a series of terraces down to a secret garden.
The secret garden is carved from the woods on either side and has a more rustic appearance, from the restricted plant palette (mostly green and white, featuring astilbe prominently) into the rustic rock fountain. Beyond is a view through a meadow into a pond.
In spite of its proper arrangement, the plantings and other materials within this backyard make it an appropriate transitional space out into the less manicured regions of the property.
The garden is 80′ x 80′ square and quite pleasing in scale and proportion. The area stands up into the huge grassed terraces, and the 10-foot walls stand up to the peaks of these majestic trees beyond the backyard.
Preventing and recreating this backyard was a significant feat, since it was totally bereft. The rock fountain is the focal point and makes reference to natural materials found on the site.
Elements such as this twig chair additionally give the backyard rustic touches and reflects the more low-key air of summer cottages in the Berkshires. In fact, the plan of this Mount is an superb example of a transitional period in design between the over-the-top ornamentation of The Gilded Age seen in Newport, Rhode Island, and the back-to-nature”roughing it” attitude that followed with fantastic Camps in the Adirondacks.
This wall round the key garden controls views into the wilderness beyond.
A view through this archway shows a meadow and Laurel Lake.
This picture demonstrates how well-sited the home is atop the rock outcropping.
A view in the third floor of this Mount. It reveals the formal gardens that are an extension of the home, and the lake beyond.
Amazon
Beatrix Farrand: Private Gardens, Public Landscapes – $37.80
Beatrix Farrand, such as her aunt, lived a fascinating life, breaking free from the normal Brahmin expectations. Starting her career with her aunt and her relations, she went on to design Dumbarton Oaks, grounds at Yale University, and a number of other important projects. She’s one of the premiere landscape architects in Western history, and was the only female creator of The American Society of Landscape Architects.
Amazon
Italian Villas and Their Gardens: The Original 1904 Model by Edith Wharton – $23.10
This is a very pretty variant of Wharton’s book, Italian Villas and Their Gardens. My copy is paperback, but interestingly enough, it’s a sketch of a Italian garden in front that looks like it might have moved the secret garden in The Mount.
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