The New Jersey State Botanical Garden in Skylands in Ringwood celebrates on Sunday, September 14th, 40 years as the official botanical garden of the state.
The celebration, which begins with events at 10 a.m. The event is intended to highlight decades of preservation and participation of the community in the location near the border between New York, but the history of the Skylands extends even further.
More than a century ago, Francis Lynde always gathered the property of Pioneer Ackerland in the Ramapo Mountains and called it Skyland's farm. ATON, a prominent New York lawyer, management consultant of JP Morgan and President of the Chamber of Legal Chamber of New York State and City Bar, in the early 1900s, built a granite men's house on the property in the middle of more than 30 outbuildings, formal gardens, a working farm and a lawn that served as a golf course.
He used the website to entertain celebrities, including Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, Ethel Barrymore and JP Morgan. Samuel Parsons Jr., Protegé by Frederick Law Olmsted, always brought in to design the terrain, the drainage systems and the streets. Parsons later used photographs by Skylands, including Swan Pond to illustrate his book “The Art of Landscape Architecture, his development and its application to the modern landscape garden”.
In 1922, an investment banker, trustee of the New York Botanical Garden and the enthusiastic gardener named Clarence McKenzie Lewis Skylands and converted it into a botanical showplace. The Immediate House of House was torn down and the granite men's house was built in the Tudor style. Lewis provided landscape architects Ferruccio Vitale and Alfred Geiffert to design terraces, reflect pools and formal gardens.
During the summit of the property, Lewis maintained a staff of more than 60 gardens, according to state records, to tend to collect plants from all over the world and in New Jersey. Many of the trees, including high -towering copper beech, and a large part of the garden layout on this period.
A tour of the garden at 2 p.m. is one of the planned highlights of the event on September 14th. Children's games, a plant sale and a gift shop will be available, as will as well as volunteers for visitors who are looking for instructions or information. Parking is free. For Monday, September 15th, a separate new processes for invited guests are planned.
Although it was devoted to Governor Tom Kean as the garden of the state in 1985, Skyland has been in the state since 1966 when the officials of New Jersey bought 1,117 morning when the state was used for the first use of the Green Acres program. The gardens, which were sold by Lewis to the Shelton College in 1953, had been neglected. However, the local gardeners and kindergartens helped to restore Lewis' plantings, and in the 1970s, the gardens produced 20,000 plants annually to distribute all over the state.
Skyland's Association, founded in 1976, campaigned for the official recognition of the location, and Governor Kean ultimately approved the designation of the 96 morning around the manor house as a state botanical garden. Today's location is listed in both the state and the national registers of historical places.
The gardens in Skylands are open to the public every day free of charge. However, Skyland's Manor is generally only accessible to tours with an entry fee on Sundays. At other times, the mansion operates under a state rental agreement as a wedding location and bed and breakfast from a catering company. Volunteers and members continue to maintain the gardens, expand plantings and organize events and plant sales.