Gardens
In 1921, the Blisses hired landscape gardener Beatrix Farrand to design the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, and for almost thirty years Mildred Bliss collaborated closely with Farrand. Together they transformed the existing farmlands surrounding the house into terraced garden rooms and vistas, creating a garden landscape that progressed from formal and elegant stepped terraces, in the near vicinity of the house, to a more recreational and practical middle zone of pools, tennis court, orchards, vegetable beds, and cutting gardens, and concluding at the far reaches of the property with a rustic wilderness of meadows and stream. Within the garden rooms, Bliss and Farrand used a careful selection of plant materials and garden ornaments to define the rooms’ character and use. Since that time, other architects working with Mildred Bliss—most notably Ruth Havey and Alden Hopkins—changed certain elements of the Farrand design. The gardens at Dumbarton Oaks were first opened to the public in 1939. The Dumbarton Oaks Park is a 27 acre naturalistic streamside valley park, maintained as a part of Rock Creek Park.
Read more about this topic: Dumbarton Oaks
Famous quotes containing the word gardens:
“Our fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones
And fenced their gardens with the Redman’s bones;”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“Typical of Iowa towns, whether they have 200 or 20,000 inhabitants, is the church supper, often utilized to raise money for paying off church debts. The older and more conservative members argue that the “House of the Lord” should not be made into a restaurant; nevertheless, all members contribute time and effort, and the products of their gardens and larders.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)