Trade Secrets 2012 ~ Hyland/Wente Garden

Millerton, NY

Horticulture with a conscience, Jack Hyland and Larry Wente’s garden is where eco-friendly meets aesthetically pleasing.  This forty-one acre futuristic landscape is both outward-looking and inwardly conscientious.  A formal garden immediately surrounding the ingenious energy-efficient/owner-designed house is generously infused with whimsy and personality as well as an allée of solar panels strutting side-by-side with rows of nepeta and ornamental grasses, producing an excess of electricity fed back into the power company.  Meanwhile, water flowing off the roof of the house is collected into cisterns to save for irrigation, stone walls incorporate radiant heat, and hot air flows up a tower in summer to preclude the need for air conditioning.  Cleverly, patio plants are watered via tubes running from the front door canopy.  Designed on a grid calibrated to reduce building waste, t he garden features a water rill, a pool, arborvitae exclamation points and 22nd Century-istic reflecting orbs balanced on tall tuteurs.  Throughout, obelisks and urns furnish emphasis.  Color-themed beds bounce hues back and forth between ornamental grasses and perennials, plants range from natives to exotics, with alliums, coreopsis and tradescantia making bold statements in time for our May visit.  Everything in the garden relates to the flow of nature farther afield.  And everywhere, there are vistas surveying the meadows and spectacular views that this mountain top property commands.  

Start Slideshow

Hyland Wente Garden 1	Hyland Wente Garden 2	Hyland Wente Garden 3
Hyland Wente Garden 4	Hyland Wente Garden 5	Hyland Wente Garden 6