At Wethersfield Estate, in upstate New York, restoring the formal gardens involves dealing with emboldened pests and pathogens — but carefully, so visitors don’t see.
A walk through the formal gardens at Wethersfield Estate & Garden, in Amenia, N.Y., offers a dreamy escape back in time. The landscape, some 80 years in the making, conjures the Italian Renaissance and hints of ancient Greece.
But there is more than a grand history lesson embodied in its specimen trees, expanses of formal hedging and topiary, exquisitely sited terraces and cast of classical-style statuary.
While it may not occur to most visitors, the present moment of this remarkable scene raises some of horticulture’s most pressing questions about the future — issues that are not unique to Wethersfield, but shared by many historic landscapes and botanic gardens, as past and future tug at each other.
There is nothing new about the inherent tension in navigating the line between historic preservation and the urge to present visitors with fresh visual excitement. Today, though, there is added complexity.
How do you do all of this in the face of mounting pressure from pests and pathogens emboldened by a changing climate — particularly when some of them threaten the star players in gardens of other eras, like Wethersfield, with its majestic specimen European beech trees (Fagus sylvatica)?
Somehow Jeff Lynch, who joined as head gardener in March after nearly 10 years as grounds manager at the celebrated Chanticleer Garden, in Wayne, Pa., and his small but energetic creative team appear undaunted.
