Garden Dialogues – Special Events
Lake Forest Garden, IL, photo by Scott Shigley
Nested within the Garden Dialogues program are several unique events – generally longer and more elaborate, and sometimes held at multiple properties.
There are four scheduled this spring and summer beginning with a four-hour event on June 15 that will visit three properties (all by the same designer) in Northern Virginia, and it includes lunch. Additional destinations include an exquisite farm complex on a peninsula in Little Compton, RI; an elegant Lake Forest, IL, compound with an English country style home; and the sublime 140-acre landscape for the newly renovated Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. While the first three events have been finalized, details for the fourth, at the Clark will be posted at a later date. Proceeds from these events will support TCLF’s educational programs and they are very, very popular, so don’t dally.
Here's more detailed information about each of the four exquisite destinations and the talented people involved:
(upper) Orlean House; (middle) Rock Ford Farm; (lower) Running
Cedar, images by Roger Foley.Northern Virginia Trio: Orlean House, Rock Ford Farm and Running Cedar | Sunday, June 15th, 10:00am to 2:00pm | Northern Virginia (Hume and Marshall) | $125/ticket
Richard Arentz, Arentz Landscape Architects, with Richard Williams, Richard Williams Architects
Three properties are on the agenda – and lunch is provided – beginning with Orlean House, an 18-acre c.1795 property that has recently been updated. New elements include a swimming pool, pool pavilion, tennis court and tennis court pavilion, terraces for entertaining, large tree and boxwood restoration and extensive gardens. The site plan weaves the new and existing parts into a series of gardens, designed in the spirit of the English Landscape School and Virginia Countryside vernacular.
Next, the house and gardens of Rock Ford Farm were carefully sited by the landscape architect to maximize views of the Blue Ridge Mountains and surrounding rolling pastures. The new house reflects several architectural periods: mid-18th century farm-style barn, an early-19th century brick cottage and a mid-19th century Greek Revival core. Mature and distinctive hardwood trees were preserved to provide age and a sense of scale. There’s a large lawn contained by American boxwoods, kitchen garden and terraced orchard, and a secluded swimming pool “room” built around spectacular Blue Ridge views.
Finally, Running Cedar carpets much of the beech, hickory, poplar and oak woodland of this 85-acre property accessed by a three-quarter-mile-long driveway. Remarkable features include its rolling topography and proximity to the Rappahannock River. The project is a collaboration between the landscape architect, architect and interior designer and the plan strikes a balance between integrating the built forms into the landscape and the landscape into the built forms. Nearly every room of the house offers a unique connection to the landscape through the study of interior to exterior compositions.
The Farm at Little Compton, image by Nic LeHouxThe Farm at Little Compton | Sunday, June 22nd, 3:00 to 6:00pm | Little Compton | $100/ticket
Michael Vergason, Michael Vergason Landscape Architects, Ltd., with Peter Bohlin, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Architects
The Farm at Little Compton is a family farm that straddles a ridge-lined peninsula facing the Atlantic Ocean on the southern coast of Rhode Island. Bounded by water and set within the Sakonnet landscape, this property quietly embodies a modest agrarian character while preserving critical habitat for endangered shorebirds, coastal plants and wildlife. The Master Plan uses an existing road and walls as a skeletal structure to organize the insertion of three building compounds into the matrix of windswept coastal fields. The project artfully integrates restrained interventions with the existing fabric. This project has a lucid landscape structure and illuminates the peninsula’s striking beauty.
Lake Forest Garden, image by Scott ShigleyLake Forest Garden | Saturday, August 2nd, 5:00 to 6:30pm | Lake Forest | $60/ticket
Peter Schaudt, Steve Gierke, and Jayson De Geeter, Hoerr Schaudt, with Thomas Norman Rajkovich, Architect and Jeanne Nolan and Jacqueline Kotz, The Organic Gardener Ltd.
This charming, English country style home was designed in the early 20th century and is nestled quietly into enchanting woodland. The garden’s focal point is a placid lap pool, where a classical fountain and masonry walls establish a serene sense of enclosure. Adjoining the pool court, a foursquare cutting garden and organic vegetable garden are bordered by a tool house at the ravine’s edge. The garden’s structure dissolves into a natural wood that blends with the surrounding neighborhood.
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute | Saturday, September 13th, Time TBD | Williamstown | TBD/ticket
Gary Hilderbrand, Reed Hilderbrand and Michael Conforti, Director of the Clark Institute and Matt Noyes, Grounds Manager of the Clark Institute
This ambitious, newly completed project twelve years in the making involves the renovation of the museum’s buildings, a new Tadeo Ando-designed visitor center and the complex’s thoughtful and reverential integration within its 140 acres of surrounding pastures and woods. The goal is a seamless interrelationship between the art, the buildings and the surrounding landscape – and a nuanced and enlightening discourse between the museum’s core collection of landscape painting and the bucolic northern Berkshires. Roads, walkways and paths have been reoriented, and there are extensive new plantings of American elms and beeches, along with aspen, birch, pin and red oaks, and sugar maple. As Gary Hilderbrand told WBUR radio: “We’ve taken the ingredients that give you a rural experience of the place … and given it back to you.”