Beatrix Farrand brought many of her favorite plants, fencing elements, and garden ornaments from Reef Point to Garland Farm, where she designed her last garden. At the entrance to the Farrand wing, she created a 32’ x 25’ Asian-inspired garden containing some plants from the Far East. The terrace garden (44’ x 40’) at the rear of the wing was surrounded by a low wooden fence, salvaged from a client’s estate in Bar Harbor and later removed to Reef Point. The garden is divided into rectangular parterres and the central area outside the study consists of heaths, heathers, and lavender.
The annual and perennial plantings outside Clementine’s suite were warm in color, while those outside Beatrix’s suite were in cool tones, with climbing roses and clematis integrated along the fence. Farrand added a number of specimen plants around the new house, including Japanese cherry hybrids (thought to be new introductions given to Farrand by the Arnold Arboretum), a stewartia, a metasequoia, and other trees and shrubs uncommon to Maine gardens. A small glasshouse was built to grow annuals and to over-winter the large non-hardy potted rosemarys and lemon verbenas, which Farrand like to have outside in the summer. Many of Farrand’s original trees, shrubs, and perennial plants survive. [/hcolumns]
A comprehensive Cultural Landscape Report, which was funded by the Barksdale-Dabney-Henry Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation, was prepared in 2007 by Pressley Associates, a landscape architectural firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a distinguished record in researching and restoring public and private historic properties. The CLR serves as a guide to an informed rehabilitation of the unique gardens and grounds at Garland Farm.
View Terrace Garden Plan and article by Mary Alice Roche (Article courtesy of RD Publications, Inc.)