Autumn In Avalon's Garden

Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves, the uneaten fruits crumbling damply in the shadows, unmattering back from the particular island of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere except underfoot, moldering in that black subterranean castle of unobservable mysteries - - -roots and sealed seeds and the wanderings of water. This I try to remember when time's measure painfully chafes, for instance when autumn flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing to stay - - - how everything lives, shifting from one bright vision to another, forever in these momentary pastures. - Mary Oliver

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Bamboo Brook ~

Hello Everyone ~

This past weekend was just beautiful so we hit the road to catch some of the Autumn colors again. We stopped by Willowwood for a bit, then traveled on to their next door neighbor (just about a mile or so down the road), Bamboo Brook. I won’t get into a long drawn out history just a quick overview , then on to the pictures :)

Martha Brookes Hutcheson (October 2, 1871 – 1959) was an American landscape architect, lecturer, and author, active in New England, New York, and New Jersey.

Hutcheson was born in New York City as Martha Brookes Brown, and as a child spent her summers on a family farm near Burlington, Vermont. From 1893-1895 she studied at the New York School of Applied Design for Women, and in the late 1890s toured Europe where she studied gardens in England, France, and Italy. As Hutcheson later wrote in The Spirit of the Garden:

In 1900 she entered MIT's new landscape architecture program at age 29, where she studied for two years before leaving without degree in 1902. She subsequently designed the grounds of several residential estates near Boston, most notably Frederick Moseley's large Newburyport estate, 1904-1906 (now Maudslay State Park), and Alice Longfellow's Craigie House (now the Longfellow National Historic Site) in Cambridge.

After Hutcheson's marriage in 1911, she retired from commercial practice but she began to landscape her own garden (5 acres) on the couple's 100-acre (0.40 km²) farm in Gladstone, New Jersey. Its overall design was influenced by classical Italian gardens, featuring a pond enclosed by native plants, vegetable garden, flower borders, orchards, allées, and farm buildings. This farm, with garden, is now preserved as the Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center.

In 1935 she was named a fellow in the American Society of Landscape Architects, the third woman to receive this distinction. Although Hutcheson executed dozens of commissions, including gardens at Bennington College and Billings Farm (now the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park), most of her works have been lost.

To Read more Bamboo Brook ;

Source: Wikipedia *

Smithsonian Institution Research Information System *

Mighty Garden *

Run mouse over pictures for captions ~

Water is captured from underground springs at the upper edges of the property, and gradually travels downhill.

Below; Garden Pool

Below; Path leading from Garden Pool to rear of Main House.

Below; Rear of Main House, this is where the Kitchen was located, and an Herb Garden outside.

Below; View from rear of Main House

To the right of gate, pathway leads to Potting Shed~ (once the daughter’s playhouse)

Below; Taking a peek thru the Potting Shed windows ……

Below; Lower level has potting benches & shelves and dry sink ……

Below; Just below the Potting Shed is the remains of what was a Gazebo, and behind the Gazebo a Tennis Court.

Below; Heading back toward the House ……

Below; To the left of the gate is a Shade Garden with a Stone bench

Below; Moss growing on stone wall …..

Below; The Little house was the new playhouse,,,, ( hubby & I thought this was the gardener’s cottage…. I don't know smile , nice to have $$…. just sayin…..)