History & Restoration
The Beatrix Farrand Garden is adjacent to the Bellefield Mansion, an 18th century “country house”, remodeled by McKim, Mead and White, the most respected architects of the time, for Sen. Thomas and Sarah Newbold between 1909 and 1911.
Bellefield was the Newbold family home until 1929, and then the Morgan family home until 1976, when the Morgans donated the house and surrounding 70-plus acres to the National Park Service.
Beatrix Farrand, a cousin of Thomas Newbold, was hired to design the garden between 1911 and 1912 for a “seasonal” home and garden for the Newbold family visits in the Spring and Fall. Beatrix Jones, not yet married and known as Beatrix Farrand, was already known as an influential American garden designer. In Hyde Park, she created a walled garden to create family privacy with connections to outside natural areas and with the properties beyond. Her design for the garden integrated with the lines and character of the newly remodeled house, with its new terrace overlooking the walled garden, a space that was designed for family life and entertaining.
After the Morgan’s donation in 1975 of the property to the NPS, the garden was unmaintained for two decades. In 1993, a group of local citizens recognized the historical significance of the garden, began extensive research using Farrand’s archived documents at UC Berkeley. The group formed the nonprofit Beatrix Farrand Garden Association (BFGA), and began the effort to bring the garden back to its former beauty.
Volunteer gardeners, along with NPS staff, protected, restored, replanted, rebuilt, and obtained new plants that matched Farrand’s favorites. Later, the original gates designed by Farrand were restored by Eagle Scout, Danial Heslin. Since that time, BFGA staff and volunteers have thoughtfully stewarded the garden, continuously protecting the legacy and beauty of Beatrix Farrand’s pioneering design work.
Although the original fieldstone walls, stone-edged gravel paths, and handsome wood gates remained in place, the planting beds had been lost to time. While Farrand’s original planting plans for Bellefield had been lost to the ages, a team of landscape designers and gardeners researched the designs of Farrand’s nearby gardens of the same time period and used historic photos to planting restoration in the 1990’s resulted in stunning beds that display Farrand’s exceptional understanding of color and texture. Beautiful beds of pink; white; blush, cream and grey; and mauve and purple, have been carefully maintained since that time, set off by the vine-traced walls and clipped evergreen hedges.
The Bellefield Mansion now serves as the National Park Service headquarters for the four NPS Hudson Valley sites: the adjacent Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt’s Val-Kill, the Vanderbilt Mansion, and the Martin Van Buren home, as well as the land which allowed for other additions to the overall site, including the modern Wallace Center, the Home Garden, expanded parking, and trail connections.
The Beatrix Farrand Garden at Bellefield has provided lively events to the community for three decades, offering annual lectures, seasonal garden talks, cultural arts programs, group tours, plant sales, and more.
BFGA, the nonprofit charged with the preservation, maintenance, and interpretation of the Garden, operates solely through the efforts of generous donors, members, helpful volunteers, and a small staff.