United States of America -- Connecticut -- Fairfield County -- New Canaan
Kathie Moore Gardens (New Canaan, Connecticut)
Scope and Contents:
25 digital images (2008-2015) and 1 file folder.
General:
The brick Georgian colonial style house built in the 1940's with 8.3 acres was inherited but other than trees everything has been changed. One of the first projects was installing a brick wall and gazebo near the tennis court, followed by stone walls, steps, paths, picket fences, terraces, trellises, a passageway connecting the house to another building, a swimming pool, sculptures, garden statuary, garden lighting, hedges, trees, shrubs and perennials, with annuals added each year to containers and borders. The owner designed gardens that encircle the house, a gazebo garden, front entrance garden, a 160-foot wall garden, swimming pool garden and open terrace garden. Island beds and borders have been added, eliminated or replanted as the owner "paints pictures using living plants".
The property is entered on a gravel drive between stone pillars that are connected to stone walls and across a stone bridge over a stream that has fields on each side. On one side the field is filled with native plants including Joe Pye weed, butterfly weed, swamp weed, asters, ferns and sedge. The other field has grasses, irises, filipendula and a large diabolo ninebark shrub. Further along the drive there is a circle bed with a mature linden tree, shrubs, a rabbit statue, a large rock, and a Mexican baptismal font used as a planted container. The perimeter of the house is planted with boxwood hedges and ball shaped bushes, crabapple and pachysandra. Sheared boxwood hedges zigzag to the front door and cast stone containers in the formal entrance garden are planted with white flowering annuals and companion foliage. Underfoot there are granite squares edged with brick. Near a venerable sugar maple at one corner of the house the 160-foot stone retaining wall garden room built in the 1990's is planted with shrubs, perennial flowers and boxwood with planted stone baskets perched on either side of stone steps that are planted with campanula and thyme. There are many whimsical features in the gardens or on exterior surfaces of the buildings such as statues of rabbits and dogs, giant ceramic frogs, birdcages, birdhouses, reflecting mirrors and on the retaining wall "The Old Man of Mikeno", a 1923 bronze bust of the Gorilla sculpted by Carl Akeley in 1864 for the Museum of Natural History in New York.
Persons associated with the garden include: George Stevens and Beatriz B. Moore (former owners, 1940-1973); George Bermejillo Moore (former owner, 1973-2015); Katharine L. Moore (owner, 1973- ); Enrique Monjo (1895-1976) (sculptor); Carl Akeley (1864-1926) (sculptor).
Collection Restrictions:
Access to original archival materials by appointment only. Researcher must submit request for appointment in writing. Certain items may be restricted and not available to researchers. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Collection Rights:
Archives of American Gardens encourages the use of its archival materials for non-commercial, educational and personal use under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law. Use or copyright restrictions may exist. It is incumbent upon the researcher to ascertain copyright status and assume responsibility for usage. All requests for duplication and use must be submitted in writing and approved by Archives of American Gardens. Please direct reference inquiries to the Archives of American Gardens: aag@si.edu.
Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, The Garden Club of America collection.
Sponsor:
A project to describe images in this finding aid received Federal support from the Smithsonian Collections Care Initiative, administered by the National Collections Program.