Innisfree Garden
photos and article by Neil Soderstrom
"Innisfree is one of the most startlingly beautiful of the Hudson Valley's gardens: a 150-acre landscape centered on a hill-girdled lake," says garden writer Ogden Tanner in Gardens of the Hudson Valley. Indeed, Innisfree has often been featured in coffee-table books and in prestigious American and British magazines; the National Geographic Guide to America's Public Gardens ranks Innisfree as one of the best. Yet, located a little west of Millbrook at the south end of a long country lane, Innisfree is just enough off the beaten path to go unnoticed by many area residents.
This is unfortunate, for Innisfree Garden richly rewards visitors of varied interests and needs. To landscape architects, it is a must stop for its extraordinary use of local stone in monoliths, walls, and stairways; for its reservoir-fed waterfalls and fountains; for its bermed lawns. To garden designers, Innisfree is a museum of artfully composed water, rocks, trees, shrubs, and "no-fuss" herbaceous plants--the plants continuously altering the landscape's colors and textures through the seasons. To people feeling stressed, Innisfree is a sanctuary of peace and beauty.
To me, Innisfree offers all of the above--and more. Initially, it was an extraordinary place my wife had discovered, a place where we could stroll or sit, while marveling at its interconnected series of "cup gardens" and their cumulative impression, not to mention the sacred lotuses and mute swans. By now, Innisfree has become part of me, a photographic work in progress, just as Innisfree itself is a work in progress--ever changing in subtle, tastefully orchestrated ways, each framed garden affording an exquisite composition and then compositions within compositions, each garden flowing gracefully into the next.
A Visit
Innisfree's woodsy half-mile entrance road opens into initially park-like scenes. But Innisfree is far more than a park. From the grassy parking area, with self-guiding map, "visitors cross a picnic area that commands a fine view of the lake... Clustered around the north side of the lake are a wealth of pictures: a 'mist fountain' spuming from a high outcrop; a steep rock garden with a waterfall; a sinuous stream.... and a whole series of gardens built on the terraced foundation of the old mansion, set off by a lotus pool" -- again the words of Ogden Tanner.
From there you can move to the world-famous stonework of The Point. Its terrace features three huge rocks resembling a turtle, a dragon, and an owl. Then you might continue southward along the shore, crossing a long wooden bridge leading to a pine forest with geyserlike Fountain Jet. From there, you could proceed to the corn-crib bog crossing and then north into Hemlock Grove, emerging near the Lakeside Cottage, with willows weeping over a bubbling Air Spring. Nearby, columnar maples and gingkos frame a gorgeous grove of smoke trees.
At a leisurely pace, you can complete the shoreline circuit in an hour or so. But that's too fast because Innisfree offers more than can be absorbed in days.
Historical & Design Perspectives
First opened to the public in 1960, Innisfree was conceived as a private estate in the 1930s by Walter and Marion Beck. Walter was an artist who created what he called "cup gardens," three-dimensional pictures inspired by aesthetic landscape principles evidenced in eighth-century Chinese scroll paintings in which water, rocks, and trees have spiritual significance. These are best described in Innisfree's leaflet: "The cup garden draws attention to something rare or beautiful. This special object is segregated by establishing an enclosure around it so that it can be enjoyed without distraction. A cup garden may be an enframed meadow, a lotus pool, or a single rock."
Beck transformed parts of the wooded west and north lakeshore into a network of more than a dozen cup gardens that still rely on his artful stonework and falling water for framing and focus. Yet, although influenced by 1,000-year-old Oriental design principles, Beck created gardens that reflected his creative genius, gardens that were both unique and uniquely American.
After Beck's death in 1954, friend and former Dean of Harvard's Department of Landscape Architecture Lester Collins formed and presided over the Innisfree Foundation. While celebrating Beck's work, Collins saw potential for connecting it into the lake's total landscape. "At Innisfree he perceived the lake, the surrounding hills, and the three cliffs as one large cup encompassing many smaller ones. Like the great Chinese masters of the landscape, he listened to the garden itself when making his improvements, creating berms and hillocks to draw the visitor seamlessly from area to area within it," write Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor in their Gardens for the Future.
Collins created his own cup gardens as well--completing a necklace of gardens around the lake. His gardens on the southern and eastern shores include pump-driven water features and the corn crib bridge. On the west and north side of the lake, they include the serpentine brook and the vast system of lawns that afford deep vistas and a sense of unity and flow.
By the time of his death in 1993, Collins had doubled the size of the garden. Since then, Collins' wife, Petronella, has carried on both as President of the Foundation and curator of the garden, selecting her near-constant introduction of new plants and supervising all planting and maintenance.
As to the personalities of Beck and her husband, Mrs. Collins is quoted in Cooper and Taylor's book: "Walter Beck was a mystical man, no doubt about it, and he and Lester had a tremendous rapport. However, my husband was a forthright Quaker, and there were no spirits in any rocks."
It's fair to suggest that today's Innisfree is really the result of the collaboration of three highly talented and dedicated people: Walter Beck, Lester Collins, and Petronella Collins.
Innisfree's Name
Walter Beck named his estate in honor of W. B. Yeats' poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." From his teens, the Irish Yeats had longed to live a quiet life on a little island he knew, in imitation of American Henry David Thoreau. Here's how Yeats recalled his inspiration: "...when walking through Fleet Street very homesick I heard a little tinkle of water and saw a fountain in a shop window which balanced a little ball upon its jet, and began to remember lake water. From the sudden remembrance came my poem 'Innisfree.'"
The poem has three stanzas. In the first, Yeats says he will arise and go to his peaceful isle and build a small cabin there, plant nine rows of beans, and have his own honeybees. In the second stanza, Yeats envisions a peaceful life, communing with nature. The third follows like this:
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
Indeed, Yeats' inspiration is reflected in Walter Beck's initial vision for Innisfree, just as it is reflected in Lester Collins' development of it--complete with lapping water and a fountain.
Neil Soderstrom is a gardening writer and photographer based in Wingdale, NY, also found at www.agpix.com/soderstrom.
What's New At The Garden
Besides many new trees and other plantings, the upper Terrace features an arresting new water sculpture that emits a soothing mist skyward.
OPEN TIMES
Season: May 1 through Oct 20
Open: Weekends & legal holidays, 11:00-5:00
Wed, Thurs, Fri, 10:00-4:00
Closed: Mon-Tues, except legal holidays
Admission: Wed, Thur, Fri ($3/person 6 years & older); weekends & legal holidays ($4/person 6 years & older)
TRAVEL DIRECTIONS
Note: Watch for the small blue metal sign on Route 44; the turn onto Tyrrel Road is just west of the Dutchess County Cooperative Extension.
From Taconic Parkway, take the Millbrook Exit, proceeding east on Route 44 just 1.7 miles to Tyrrel Road, a right turn (south) and continue 1 mile
From the Millbrook street light on Route 44, proceed west 2.1 miles to Tyrrel Road, a left turn (south) and continue 1 mile
Phone: (845) 677-8000.
