The Mount receives $500,000 grant to restore historic flower gardens

Lenox, Mass. (February 1, 2005) --

The flower gardens at The Mount will be in glorious bloom this summer thanks to a generous $500,000 grant from an anonymous Boston foundation.  Nearly 3,000 perennials and annuals will be planted in early June at the Gilded Age estate of renowned author Edith Wharton, completing the restoration of the formal gardens begun in 2001.  The colorful flower beds, described by a Wharton friend as “an oriental carpet floating in the sun” will be a breath-taking sight, viewed from the mansion and its expansive terrace as Wharton envisioned them.

The grant will also fund the reconstruction of a trellis-work niche and lattice fence designed by the architect Ogden Codman, Jr. and brought to The Mount from Wharton’s Newport home.  Crowned with a graceful arch, the 11-foot high niche will provide a necessary anchor to the novelist’s elegant design.  The wooden niche will serve as a focal point, drawing visitors through a garden that unfolds like one of Wharton’s novels or short stories.

In laying out her abundant flower borders, Edith Wharton was able to indulge her admiration for the work of British garden designer and writer Gertrude Jekyll. The English-inspired flower garden was harmoniously integrated with The Mount’s Italianate formal gardens and the surrounding New England landscape.  Wharton gleefully praised her “mass of bloom” and “riot of color” in letters to friends.  Visitors to The Mount in 2005 will finally be able to experience this unique jewel in a setting designed to enhance its beauty.

The restoration will be undertaken by Boston-based landscape architect Susan Child and local landscapers Webster-Ingersoll of Sheffield, MA, the professionals who worked on earlier stages of the garden restoration.  Child selected the plants based on a painstaking analysis of historical photos, Wharton’s own descriptions, and consultation with other restoration experts.  The Mount will match the foundation grant 2:1 to raise $1 million to establish an endowment for long-term maintenance of the gardens.

Special garden tours and walks will be offered by The Mount this summer.  The Mount opens for the season on April 30, 2005, and will be open daily through October.

The Mount’s three acres of formal gardens are among the largest and most significant in Western Massachusetts.  They were designed and planted between 1903 and 1907 by Edith Wharton, an accomplished landscape gardener, and an enthusiastic student of horticulture and European landscape design.  She published her influential and authoritative work Italian Villas and Their Gardens (still in print) in 1904 while she was designing her own gardens at The Mount.  She entered several competitions of the Lenox Horticultural Society and, in 1905, received seven first prizes.  Although Wharton was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, she still considered her gardens to be among her finest creations, and once declared, “Decidedly, I’m a better landscape gardener than novelist.”

Over the years, Wharton’s gardens had virtually disappeared through overgrowth and neglect.  By this spring, more than $3 million will have been invested in restoring the landscaped grounds at The Mount.  Already in place are a sunken Italian “secret garden” with stone walls and rock-pile fountain, a “lime walk” of linden trees, a rustic rock garden with distinctive grass steps, grass terraces lined with boxwood and arborvitae, and a dolphin fountain.  The estate has attracted nearly 90,000 visitors since its grand re-opening in 2002.

For more information on visiting The Mount, including details on 2005 exhibitions and programs, visit www.EdithWharton.org or call (413) 637-1899.

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Downloadable, high-resolution photos and more information available on request. 

Contact:

Susan Wissler

413-637-1899 ext. 103

swissler@edithwharton.org