Garden Party

Garden Party

Nine extraordinary Connecticut gardens form Connecticut's Historic Gardens, a "trail" of natural beauties across the state.

The re-created Colonial-revival garden at the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum (211 Main St., Wethersfield. 860/529-0612. www.webb-deane-stevens.org) is a presentation of old-fashioned flowers such as peonies, pinks, phlox, hollyhocks, larkspur, and antique roses.

A high-Victorian texture garden, a wildflower meadow, Connecticut's largest magnolia tree, an antique rose garden, a 100-year-old pink dogwood, and a blue cottage garden are the highlights of the grounds at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (77 Forest St., Hartford. 860/522-9258. www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org). At the Butler-McCook House & Garden (396 Main St., Hartford. 860/522-1806. www.ctlandmarks.org), landscape architect Jacob Weidenmann created a Victorian garden oasis amid downtown city life.

The centerpiece of the Hill-Stead Museum (35 Mountain Rd., Farmington. 860/677-4787. www.hillstead.org) is a circa-1920 sunken garden by Beatrix Farrand. It is enclosed in a yew hedge and surrounded by a wall of rough stone; at the center of the octagonal design is a summerhouse with 36 flowerbeds and brick walkways radiating outward. Farrand also designed the garden at Promisek Beatrix Farrand Garden (694 Skyline Ridge Rd., Bridgewater. 860/354-1788. www.promisek.org), which overflows with beds of annuals and perennials such as hollyhocks, peonies, and always-dashing delphiniums.

Legendary British garden writer and designer Gertrude Jekyll designed only three gardens in the United States, and the one at the Glebe House Museum (Hollow Rd., Woodbury. 203/263-2855. www.theglebehouse.org) is the only one still in existence. The garden is a classic example of Jekyll's ideas of color harmonies and plant combinations; a hedge of mixed shrubs encloses a mix of perennials.

An apple orchard and a circa-1915 formal parterre garden that blossoms with peonies, historic roses, and lilacs highlight the Bellamy-Ferriday House & Garden (9 Main St. N., Bethlehem. 203/266-7596. www.ctlandmarks.org). At Roseland Cottage (556 Route 169, Woodstock. 860/928-4074. www.spnea.org), the boxwood parterre garden includes 21 flowerbeds surrounded by boxwood hedge.

The gardens at the historic Florence Griswold Museum (96 Lyme St., Old Lyme. 860/434-5542. www.flogris.org), once the home of a prominent Old Lyme family and then a haven for artists, have been restored to their 1910 appearance and feature hollyhocks and black-eyed Susans.