ABOUT THE GARDENS
Gardens unique in style and design
Beyond the Garden Gate features seven private Ridgefield gardens and the four gardens at Ballard Park that are funded and maintained by Ridgefield Garden Club. Each garden is unique in style, scope, plantings, and design. Properties range from architect planned, manicured estates to small, owner planted and designed spaces. Tour goers will draw inspiration and ideas that they can apply to their own gardens.
The Artistry of Trees
Revolutionary War troops probably marched past this 1735 saltbox as they rushed to attack the British troops headed into the center of town during the 1777 Battle of Ridgefield. The landscape includes a sweeping view of mature trees and several separate garden areas including a fern garden, a shade garden, and a fenced vegetable and cutting garden. The garden is included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens.
Postcard from Kyoto, 1930
A Japanese influence is apparent in this stroll garden and in the early 20th Century Japanese pavilion with its spacious garden vista. The 1930s house was built by Paolino Gerli, a founder of the international National Raw Silk Exchange.
Clipped Modern
Carefully considered plantings and wooden terraces seamlessly anchor an elegant lakeside house to a selected view of the lake and dramatic cliffs on the far side. In order not to introduce lawn or landscape plants which could pollute the lake, the owners created several levels of outdoor rooms, utilizing naturally weathered wood decks as the floors and evergreen hedges as the walls.
Brookside Ramble
A garden that slowly reveals itself is spread over three acres. The garden begins with vistas overlooking a large field framed by mature trees. Flowering trees and perennials add splashes of color. A path lined with shade perennials guides visitors to rustic gazebos overlooking a brook.
Painterly Parterre
Set on the grounds of what was once the carriage house of a 600-acre grand Ridgefield estate, this property features a layered and fragrant cottage garden, a formal boxwood garden, and naturalistic drifts of native plantings leading to a woodland walk through ferns and rhododendrons.
Bountiful Symmetry
This 1847 farmhouse has had many lives, including as the home of the Ridgefield Knights of Columbus for a number of years. The owner-designed, -planted and -tended garden features native perennials, fruiting plants (including hops and grapes), and a vegetable garden. Perennial garden beds surround the pool.
Cascading Vignettes
The house is one of the earlier homes in Ridgefield, built in 1783 for the daughter of the town’s first minister. The garden rooms include a formal parterre, a cottage garden, a ‘wild garden’, a small ‘sun ray’ garden, and a secret garden. The garden includes a pond and other water features.
Chris Mantz, Photos on the Fly
A Public Oasis
Ridgefield’s five-acre Ballard Park on historic Main Street was a bequest of Elizabeth Biglow Ballard to the Town in 1964.The four gardens in the park are funded, planted and maintained by the Ridgefield Garden Club and include the 1920s formal perennial parterre archived at the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens, a wall garden, a native plant garden, and a small memorial garden adjacent to the 1906 Lord & Burnham greenhouse. The remarkable Graeloe estate urn, original to the Ballard Estate, is the dominant element of the memorial garden.
