go green

i think what i miss most about House & Garden is the garden part. continuing on my documentation of the Dec/07 issue, i came across a picture that i remember stopping me in my tracks. it's a photo of villa del balbianello, where the gardens (and there seems to be many) are all shaped by hand by only two live-in gardeners. can you even imagine climbing up that ladder? or having two live-in gardeners, for that matter?

photo by tessa traeger

which then made me remember another H&G garden article that i became obsessed with (boy, this project is really turning out to be like going down a rabbit hole) from the Jun/2001 H&G issue (please don't judge me for having a 9-yr old magazine on my shelf). it's a spread on the william mccormick blair house built in 1926 by david adler. built originally as a summer home, the property includes: 

a gardener's cottage 

(they surely need a live-in gardener), 

a service courtyard 

with laundry & chauffeur, 

a potting shed and 

historic Lord & Burnham greenhouse, 

an allée 

of pleached apple trees, 

a 80-by-115-foot vegetable & flower garden, 

a tennis house 

and 

a greek folly that is an homage to 

thomas jefferson. 

whew.

the folly

entry to tennis house

tennis house

{photos of adler house by richard felber}