Preserving, sharing, and celebrating america’s gardensThe Garden Conservancy
Blithewood Garden
Blithewood Garden is a nationally significant, Beaux Arts, Italianate garden with important connections to the evolution of American landscape design. One of the few intact Hudson River estate gardens that remain from the Gilded Age, at over 100 years old, Blithewood has been hard hit by the passage of time.
The Garden Conservancy and Bard College joined in partnership in 2016 to work on restoring this tresured site's architectural elements. And through the generous support of individual donors and a grant from The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation we are well underway in our conservation efforts.
With the support of the The Suzanne and Frederic Rheinstein Garden Documentation Program and board member Susan Zises Green, we have been able to capture the essence, beauty and stories of a garden through our Documentation Program and we are delighted to be able to share this film so that all can see the importance of our work and restorting this magnificant garden for generations to come.
The Suzanne and Frederic Rheinstein Garden Documentation Program at the Garden Conservancy seeks to capture and to share the essence of something that is largely experiential—the beauty and stories of a garden. This presents unique challenges and requires an innovative and layered approach to create a multi-dimensional portrait of a garden, a living work of art. Our documentation program is using words and pictures, letters and notebooks, drawings and plant lists, along with stories, sounds, and experiences that have inspired garden creators. The goal is to build, over time, an online resource that brings gardens to life in a new way in an educational tool that will continue to provide important insights for years to come.