Although just forty-five minutes from Manhattan, Greenwood Gardens is totally removed from the sights and sounds of city life. The 28-acre garden, surrounded by 2,110 acres of forest and meadows of the South Mountain Reservation, was a private estate until 2003, when the Blanchard family decided to transform it into a public garden.

Two very different American families left their marks on Greenwood Gardens. In the early 1900s, Joseph P. Day, a real estate auctioneer and self-made multi-millionaire, built the mansion and gardens as a retreat from hectic city life. Architect William Whetten Renwick designed both home and garden in an exuberant, heavily ornamented style. The garden was influenced by both Italian and Arts and Crafts styles, and laid out with strict axes and vistas. A series of lavishly planted terraces descended from the house, and an extensive system of paths made from exposed aggregate pavers led through lush, colorful plantings and recreational areas. The family could enjoy a croquet lawn, a tennis pavilion, a nine-hole golf course, a wading pool, shady pergolas and grottoes, a summerhouse, and a teahouse. The gardens were decorated with statuary and rough local stone embellished with colorful Rookwood tiles of the Arts and Crafts period.

In 1949 Peter P. Blanchard, Jr., purchased the property, and he and his wife, Adelaide Childs Frick, brought a more restrained classical formality to the estate. They replaced the flamboyant house with a Georgian brick mansion, and supplanted the extravagant flower beds with simple hedges of boxwood and yew and allées of London plane and spruce trees.

In 2000, following his father’s wishes, Peter P. Blanchard III and his wife, Sofia, began restoring the garden to its early 1900s appearance and converted it to a nonprofit conservation organization with assistance from the Garden Conservancy. The garden needed extensive work. The walls, terraces, stairs, pools, statuary, and colonnades all had to be repaired. Trees and hedges were pruned or removed, and 28 acres of plantings were recreated from old photographs and notes under the direction of Louis Bauer, formerly of Wave Hill. After more than a decade of planning, fundraising, and restoration, the garden opened to the public in 2013.

In 2020, the garden went through another extensive renovation, focusing on the main axis and fountains, and on the Garden of the Gods. Fountains were restored, walls were repaired, paving stones were reset, views were cleared, and new plantings were installed. When you visit the garden today, you are greeted by an allee of London plane trees. A towering, hand-wrought iron-grill gate, decorated with vines, ferns, parakeets, and birds of paradise is displayed at the entrance to the garden. The Main Terrace, complete with loggias, connects the house to the formal gardens, which descend downward on several more terraces. An elegant reflecting pool serves as a focal point of the first terrace. The Croquet lawn forms the next terrace, and and a bronze sculpture of a boy holding two geese holds center stage in the Garden of the Gods. As you stroll through the garden, you will find ceremonial granite hand-washing basins and whimsical oversized chess pieces that frame the stone Tea House, granite lanterns that adorn the walls of the Cascade terrace, and Chinese Fu dogs that flank the stairs.

The horticulturists at Greenwood Gardens are keen on educating the public about new and noteworthy plants, so you will see unusual trilliums, calycanthus, hellebores, viburnums, phlomis, and the newest varieties of beloved perennials such as rudbeckia, pulmonaria and baptisia, all labeled for visitors. The combination of interesting horticulture, strong classical design, and whimsical Arts and Crafts details make Greenwood Gardens a truly unique destination garden in the Northeast.