Photo of the Day: Garden at Edith Wharton’s Estate, Lenox, MA

On other occasions, I have blogged about Edith Wharton and the Berkshire summer residence in which she lived at the start of the 20^th century, The Mount. But a word—and this photo, which I took on an August 2017 visit—about the gardens at her estate might be appropriate.

Much like her home, Wharton conceived of her gardens as being harmonious and perfectly proportioned. She was a woman with very decided ideas of what she wanted, and she designed herself the formal gardens on the south and east of her home, based on her study of European landscape design. She was assisted in this effort by her niece, Beatrix Jones Farrand, who, by the time of her death in 1959 had established herself at the forefront of American landscape architecture.