Millbrook Library Tours Beatrix Farrand's Wild Garden in Hyde Park

Saturday, September 12, 11am–1pm | Hyde Park, NY

Millbrook Library's "Garden Matters" series continues with a tour of the Beatrix Farrand Garden's Wild Garden on September 12, led by the garden's Director of Horticulture, Ashley Gamell. The tour highlights native plants in a garden that's reached full, abundant bloom this time of year.

The Wild Garden is a relatively new addition to Bellefield, though it traces back to Farrand's original 1912 design for the estate. Farrand, one of America's most prominent early-20th-century landscape architects and a self-taught woman who broke into a male-dominated field, drew the flowing, scalloped outline of a "wild garden" meant to soften the fieldstone walls surrounding her more formal Walled Garden. However, the concept was never actually commissioned by the Newbold family who owned the property, and remained only a sketch for over a century. That changed in 2022, when a chance conversation between a visiting Farrand enthusiast and then-horticulturist Karen Waltuch led to a seed gift and challenge grant that eventually drew more than 140 donors and raised $150,000. The result, planted with the help of dozens of volunteers on Farrand's 151st birthday, is now one of the Hudson Valley's more significant native plant displays: over 160 species and 7,000 perennials, designed using research into Farrand's own signature wild-garden plantings by local landscape designer Heather Whitefield, National Park Service horticulturists, and former BFGA staff.

Bellefield's Walled Garden itself is the oldest surviving residential design by Farrand, dating to 1912, and sits on the grounds of the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, adjacent to the Bellefield Mansion.

Beatrix Farrand Garden at Bellefield, 4097 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park, NY. Register through Millbrook Library.