Garden Conservancy Open Days: The Garden Conservancy is hosting an Open Day garden program on Saturday, June 15, 2019. The public is invited to tour Edgecroft, the private garden of Anthony “Bud” and Virginia Korteweg, 800 Summit Avenue, River Edge from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. The Open Day is rain or shine, and no reservations are required. Admission is $10 per person, children 12 and under are free. Call 1-888-842-2442, or visit www.gardenconservancy.org/open-days for more information.
Edgecroft is a unique terraced property laid out in 1910 by Italian artisans. One hundred Carrara marble steps lead to a swimming pool surrounded by a stone-columned pergola draped in roses, wisteria, and honeysuckle. A gated brick courtyard entrance with a slowly maturing allée of hydrangeas greets guests. Hydrangeas provide a warm welcome with hues of pink and lavender interspersed with a variety of mixed perennials. There are also rare Cryptomeria ‘Lobbii,’ rhododendrons, azaleas, a Magnolia virginiana, a tiered bronze angel fountain, a Victorian-style perennial garden with David Austin antique roses and favorite perennials, a formal garden with crape myrtles, azaleas, and a fountain with a copy of Verricchio’s fifteenth-century bronze “Cupid with Dolphin.”
A series of three koi ponds are interspersed with nine waterfalls that cascade down terraces edged with aged pines, golden larches, flowering cherry trees, dogwoods, Styrax japonicus, hydrangeas, wild strawberries, and creeping roses. Bronze water statuary, stone benches, and stone statuary can be enjoyed throughout the grounds. A crushing 2010 winter storm transformed the white Bridal Room, but American Heritage river birch trees remain to frame this garden room with their tall leafy canopy.
Newly planted shrubs are tucked under pink and white eastern dogwoods (Cornus ‘Florida’) with several new Thuja occidentalis ‘Degroot’s Spire’ give the garden room an Italianate feeling as visitors enter. An exquisite pair of Franklinia trees and weeping eastern redbuds (Cercis canadensis ‘Covey’) are newly added trees of special interest. A dense carpet of creeping white and pink roses and hundreds of rainbow-colored impatiens complete this garden transformation.
2019 Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Feast is July 10th-July 13th. Read more…
