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"...In modern flower gardens...it is the
practice to choose, for the most part, low-growing flowers...And to plant
them in masses, sometimes filling a whole bed, or at others only part
of a bed, with the same flower. This produces a brilliancy of effect quite
impossible in any other way."
-Andrew Jackson Downing,
Cottage Gardens, 1842.
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Henry Bowen's
Parterre
In 1850, when Henry Bowen began to lay out the gardens at Roseland Cottage
in Woodstock, Connecticut, the old straight lines of colonial days had
begun to bend, and the curving line triumphed. Instead of the usual center
line is a curiously curved oval, long and dominant, planted with brilliant
red geraniums surrounded by low bright green boxwood. On either side are
the curved lines of the parterres, twenty islands of color in the sea
of gravel walks, brim full with horticultural delights, such as heliotrope,
cosmos, dahlias, and coleus, all of which were found on Bowen's plant
inventory list of 1850.
An unusual, surviving example, ultimately derived from the princely gardens
of Renaissance and baroque Europe, this type of design is labor intensive
and rarely used today, an exception being at the garden of the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, D.C. At Bowen House each spring, SPNEA's part-time
gardener and volunteers set out 4,500 annuals following Bowen's original
list, requiring an average of sixty plants to fill a 4' x 6' area.
Early American designs of the flower parterre also show the addition of
ornamental trees to the ensemble. In colonial gardens, particularly in
the south, there were native plants such as dogwood, redbud, and fringe
tree, brought in from the surrounding woodland. In later gardens, the
emphasis was on exotics. At Bowen House there is an impressive Japanese
maple and a Chinese Wisteria, as well as old hydrangeas and lilacs that
add notes of informality to the whole pattern.
This garden was restored in 1978 by Professor Rudy Favretti, landscape
historian at the University of Connecticut, and continues to be studied
today as SPNEA discovers new evidence of what once existed there.
-Diane K. McGuire
Director of Landscape Preservation
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