Gilded Age Garden on the Connecticut Shore

During my recent Long Island’s Splendor trip, we stopped at this historic mansion and gardens. With gorgeous views of Long Island Sound, Harkness Memorial State Park is a beautifully landscaped recreation area along the Connecticut shoreline. It was the private summer home of the Harkness family during the Gilded Age, and boasts elegant gardens designed by Beatrix Farrand.

The focal point of the park is Eolia, a 42-room Roman Renaissance-style mansion built in 1906, and purchased by Edward and Mary Harkness in 1907. It was named Eolia for the island home of Aeolus, keeper of the winds in Greek mythology. The Harknesses acquired their fortune through substantial investments in John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, and like many of the wealthy class during this period, they spent summers in the countryside.

Eolia was one of seven Harkness residences and the family’s summer retreat. The 230-acre property was a working farm with poultry, dairy cows, a vegetable garden, and an orchard. The grounds included a nine-hole golf course and a windmill that pumped water into the home’s 20,000-gallon water tank.

James Gamble Rogers created a grand walled garden with classical sculpture, an elevated wisteria-clad pergola overlooking Long Island Sound, tennis courts, and a lawn extending from a formal fountain court.

In 1919 Beatrix Farrand remodeled the gardens. She converted the tennis court into the Oriental Garden—a special setting for the family’s collection of Chinese and Korean vases and sculpture. Formal in layout, the garden featured a sunken grass panel and a central reflecting pool, and was planted with billowing flowers in soft pastels—baby’s breath, dianthus, roses, lavender, and lilies—punctuated with heliotrope standards.

Farrand revised the West Garden to a more naturalistic planting scheme, added a boxwood parterre surrounded by a whimsical wrought iron fence, and planted a sloping rock garden with alpine plants. Upon Farrand’s retirement from practice in 1949, Marian Coffin updated the plantings in the East Garden. The gardens were faithfully restored to Farrand’s and Coffin’s plans by the Friends of Harkness in the 1990s.

The property includes the original farmhouse and servants’ quarters, as well as the remains of the windmill and the Lord & Burnham greenhouse that once provided seedlings for the Harkness gardens and later for the State Capitol and other park facilities. Mature specimen trees and the remains of a cutting garden provide a glimpse of the property’s bygone days. A stroll along the Niering Walk, a grass trail that winds through a native marsh, leads to Goshen Cove. A footpath from the imposing back lawn leads right down to the sandy beach.

Upon her death in 1950, Mary Harkness left the property to the State of Connecticut “for health purposes,” with a third designated as a summer camp for handicapped groups and the remainder as a state park.

Harkness Memorial State Park, 275 Great Neck Rd., Waterford, CT 06385, ct.gov/deep, friendsofharkness.org

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Osborne Homestead Museum: The Home and Garden of an Extraordinary Woma

By today’s standards, Frances Osborne Kellogg was an extraordinary woman. By the standards of the late 1800s, she was a force of nature—a successful industrialist, cattle breeder, philanthropist, and conservationist. When her father died in 1907 and the probate judge suggested that his companies be sold so that the family could live off the profits and Frances could go to college, the 31-year old young heiress replied, “Sell them? No. I intend to run them.”

A gifted violinist from an early age, Frances was expected to study music in college. She loved attending opera, theater and musical concerts in New York City. But an accident with a sewing needle damaged her eyesight, and Frances’ life took a different direction. Her father had taught her how to run the family business, and Frances took on the unusual challenge as a woman CEO of four different companies. All of them prospered under her leadership.

When she married New York architect Waldo Stewart Kellogg in 1919, the couple’s focus became the family dairy. The Kelloggs developed a reputation for their selective cattle-breeding program. As the family fortune grew, Frances invested in her community, supporting local organizations and building the Derby Neck Library.

Derby Neck Library

Waldo enlarged and remodeled the house in the Colonial Revival style in the 1920s, and Frances added the ornamental gardens. She had a deep love of flowers from childhood, and enjoyed attending annual flower shows in New York City. In 1910 she hired Yale architect Henry Killam Murphy to design her formal flower garden, and employed Robert Barton from Kew Gardens as her head gardener. 

French doors lead from the house and conservatory to this lovely garden, which is also visible from the street. The garden is bisected by a white trellis fence accented with red roses, purple clematis, and yellow honeysuckle. A central arbor provides benches where you can sit and enjoy the beauty and scents of the flowers. One half of the garden is dedicated to Frances’s favorite flower, the rose. Four rectangular rose beds are enclosed by long borders of old-fashioned favorites such as foxgloves, irises, goats beard, and salvias. The other half of the garden is a formal perennial garden of bearded iris, peonies, daylilies and sedums. Four beds of standard roses, weigela and boxwood surround a circular bed accentuated with a sundial.

The garden is bordered on one side by a long stone wall, with steps that lead to beds of lilacs and other ornamental shrubs and trees. On the slope above the formal gardens, a rock garden has been created with conifers, ferns and perennials. Peak time to see the garden is mid May to mid June.

Frances’ love of gardening and nature continued throughout her lifetime. She was an active member of local garden societies, and became a sponsor of the Connecticut College Arboretum. As her interest in conservation grew, she became the first female vice chair of the Conn. Forest and Park Association. Frances lived in the family home until her death in 1956. Before she died, she deeded her entire estate to the State of Connecticut, including 350 acres for Osborndale State Park.

In addition to the garden, you can tour the restored historic home with its collection of original furnishings, antiques, ceramics, artwork and personal mementos. Frances’ doll still rests on her childhood bed and the opera cape that she wore to performances at the Met is draped over a settee.

Osborne Homestead Museum, 500 Hawthorne Ave., Derby, CT 06418, (203) 734-2513
Hours: May 5–Oct. 28: Thurs.–Fri. 10–3, Sat. 10–4, Sun. 12–4