“Autumn’s… golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. ”
Gone are the roses, tulips, dahlias in full bloom and bees hunting for pollen. In are the oaks, maples and sweetgums brandishing multicolored leaves and the fallen among them, some afloat or sunk in lakes, ponds and pools across Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island.
The rustic estate’s constants, features that conversely show their age at a decades-long pace, include wrought-iron gates, Greek and Roman style statues and a redbrick-and-limestone mansion, the centerpiece of this 200-acre grounds.
Completed in 1906, the three-story, 23-room Westbury House was built as a Charles II-style manor for John Shaffer Phipps, a U.S. Steel heir and financier. Phipps employed London’s George Crawley to design and construct the classic English country home with manicured gardens to help lure his wife, Margarita Grace, to move from her native and beloved England, where they married three years prior.
The couple passed in the late 1950s and their daughter, Margaret Phipps Boegner, established the nonprofit Old Westbury Gardens that has since managed, maintained and opened the estate to the public with the mission to “inspire appreciation and knowledge of the best qualities exemplified in the American country estate of the early 20th century.”
My sister, Maureen, introduced me to the gardens in the 1980s and I’ve since been an admirer and repeat visitor, none more than in autumn. Like no other season, I believe, fall lends her grace best to estates like Old Westbury Gardens that evoke ages of centuries past.
The season spells the onset of age, with noticeable wrinkles, fading, withering, yet still boasts marvelous colors cast in gold, bronze, copper and other ancient metals, while some leaves turn fiery red as if fresh from a kiln. Such an estate dressed up in fall seems more fitting than fashions spun by spring’s baby-blue rebirth and summer’s green youth.
Come, take a walk with me and discover for yourself …
