Courtesy Linwood Gardens

history

Inspired by the principles of the Country Life Movement enunciated by Liberty Hyde Bailey, the Linwood Estate was built as a rural retreat from the discomfort of city life in the summer. The estate consists of approximately 300 acres of woodland and farm fields looking east over the Genesee Valley. Typical of the large, private rural estates built during the Country Place Era (1890-1920), the eight-acre designed gardens were laid out along the axes of the main house. In addition to a walled, square-acre vegetable garden, Gratwick built a lily pool, a tennis court with a pergola overlook, a formal walled garden with reflecting pools, and a walled swimming pool. These formal elements are now surrounded by mature specimens of exotic and indigenous trees, as well as one of the most important collections of American tree peonies in the world.

Courtesy Linwood Gardens

Gratwick’s youngest son, William H. Gratwick III, acquired the estate upon the death of his father in 1934. Gratwick was an alumnus of Harvard University, like his father, with degrees in architecture and landscape architecture. He spent a year traveling in Europe as a Charles Eliot Fellow in Landscape Architecture, an honor bestowed on outstanding Harvard students. When he returned to the United States, his family had lost their fortune. Gratwick started a rare plant nursery in Buffalo, New York, in order to support his young family. After the death of his father, the younger Gratwick gave up the enterprise and moved with his wife, Harriet Lee Saltonstall, to the Linwood Estate.