Bunny Williams
Falls Village, CT

Interior designer and garden book author Bunny Williams’ intensively planted fifteen-acre estate features a sunken garden with twin perennial borders surrounding a fishpond. There are also a year-round conservatory filled with tender plants, a vegetable garden with flowers and herbs, a woodland garden with meandering paths and a pond with a waterfall. A working greenhouse nurtures early plants and an aviary houses unusual chickens and fantail doves. Recent additions include an apple orchard with mature trees, a rustic Greek Revival pool house folly, and a swimming pool with eighteenth-century French coping.

Joan Larned
Kent, CT

This lovingly cared for garden mingles the simplicity of the past with the excitement of the present. When Joan’s grandparents came to Lake Waramaug in 1899, practicality was the marching order, resulting in apple trees and blueberry bushes with deep roots and hayfields that give the property a sense of space. The highlight of the homestead is the old-fashioned walled garden at its heart. Entered through a rock garden, the walled garden has the haunting magnetism of a space that’s been allowed to age but has been continually groomed. Even the rock garden has a story to tell, as it was built in the foundation of a bygone blacksmith shop. Joan’s eye for plants and color combinations lifts the garden to a level beyond its original formality, resulting in captivating nooks and crannies punctuated by horticultural treasures. Joan has maintained the same sense of place that prevailed when her grandparents worked the land, while simultaneously achieving her own inimitable expression.

Monika & Buddy Nixon
Kent, CT

If it can be said that a property celebrates the genius of a place, this landscape worships its location. Given seven acres of ledge tangled in invasives, the Nixons have devoted twenty-seven years to clearing the land and draping its contours in undulating plantings. Home-built stonewalls emphasize the lines of the land, elevating masonry to sculptural art. On ground level, textural beds flow – each presenting a blanket of massed perennials. The arboreal masterpieces that stretch their limbs above it all are the truly phenomenal aspects of this garden. Not only was each rare and connoisseur-quality sylvan specimen carefully researched, hand-selected and thoughtfully positioned, but Buddy Nixon has meticulously and patiently trained every tree into sinewy, muscular form. The resulting arboretum frames sumptuous views of the surrounding hills and lakes.

Robert Couturier / Jeffrey Morgan
Kent, CT

Set amidst rhythmically arranged native shrubs and deftly clipped into geometric parterres, this formal confection is as close as Connecticut comes to Versailles. The architecture of the house compliments the terraced parterres to lend the distinct French accent. This gem is set in the unlikely frame of selected native shrubs that should give visitors a hint of design possibilities for their own backyards. As focal points, and as whimsy, sculpture and urns accent the property’s fancy footwork. Entertaining areas and voluptuous containers adorn the waterfront side of the house, giving further “take home” suggestions for plants that can endure the elements.

This garden was designed and is maintained by master gardener Clive Lodge, who is responsible for a number of noteworthy properties in this region. At the bottom of the drive visitors can also enter the faithfully restored small 1743 cape that once belonged to a worker in one of the iron businesses that dotted Kent in the Colonial era. Surrounded by an exuberant cottage garden, this “everyman’s house” is a remarkable survivor.

Photography by Anne Day, John Gruen, Maria Quiroga, and Lisa Sheble