Mid summer in New Jersey is hot: noisy with cicadas and busy with dueling hummingbirds. I only have one feeder and must get another. These little whirring balls of energy are so possessive of their sugary supply they will dive bomb other birds trying to feed!
A couple of weeks ago we had the hottest day for 50 years. While not the perfect day for a garden tour, it was nonetheless a terrific day as I met for the first time, my local members of the Garden Writers Association, and visited three gardens in New Jersey’s Morris County: Frelinghuysen Arboretum, Willowwood Arboretum and Bamboo Brook Garden.
Morris County is a true hidden gem with an surprising number of public gardens and beautiful estates to visit. Only a short commute from NYC, the bucolic, unspoiled area was a perfect retreat for wealthy New York families. Moguls including the Frelinghuysens, Otto H. Kahn and Charles Mellon built there. The area became so popular during the 1920′s that there more millionaires living in a three mile radius of Morristown Green than anywhere else in the United States. (Historic Morris County Tourism).
Here’s a quick wrap up of the estates we visited:
Willowwood is the oldest functioning arboretum in New Jeresy and the home of the Tubbs family from Pennsylvania. This is a farm of great horticultural diversity with nine notable tree collections including: Acer, Carya (Hickory), Cornus (Dogwood), Magnolia, Prunus (Cherry), Quercus (Oak), Salix (Willow), Syringa (Lilac) and Virbunum.
For the calendar: Fall Open House on Sunday, September 25 from noon – 4pm where the Tubbs House is open to the public.
Bamboo Brook Garden was the home of Martha Brooks Hutcheson (MBH), one of America’s first women landscape architects. Martha Hutcheson designed gardens for dozens of estates in Massachusetts and Long Island, as well as many smaller gardens in New York and northern New Jersey. Her book “The Spirit of the Garden” written in 1923, has since become a gardening classic and was released by the ASLA in 2001. (info courtesy of Morris County Parks Commission)
Frelinghuysen Arboretum was once the country home of George Griswold Frelinghuysen and his wife, Sara Ballantine Frelinghuysen and called Whippany Farm. The home is an very fine example of Colonial Revival architecture. This was an active working farm until the last family member died in 1969, after which time the property was bequeathed as a public arboretum . The Arboretum has an active event calender so do check what’s on before you visit. The current exhibition is Medicinal Plants of the Civil War.
