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Lisburne Grange in Garrison, New York, features a brilliant example of a Fletcher Steele terraced garden set amidst a stellar example of a Romantic nineteenth-century Hudson River landscape. It comprises extraordinary green gardens designed by the eminent landscape architect between 1921 and 1937 to complement the Italianate mansion overlooking the Hudson River and West Point built in 1862 by railroad magnate Samuel Sloan.
It is a green garden in perfect scale designed with particularly outstanding ornamentation, including ancient Tunisian columns, a swimming pool inspired by the dragon fountain at the Villa d’Este outside Rome, Italy, a wrought iron tea house with fine filigree
work, and a cleverly placed reflecting pool. The gardens are set amidst a collection of magnificent specimen shade trees original to the house, including sugar maples, ginkgos, magnolias, and an impressive Linden tree aleé.
Fletcher Steele (1885-1971) was one of this country’s busiest and most prominent landscape architects of the first half of the 20th century. Perhaps best-known and admired for the Blue Steps terraces at Naumkeag in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Steele was called by his biographer Robin Karson “the link, between 19th‑-century Beaux Arts formalism and modern landscape design.”
Steele was invited to design at Lisburne Grange by the second generation of Sloans, Katherine and Samuel, who inherited the estate upon the elder Sloan’s death in 1907. Katherine Sloan was herself an inspired designer and gardener. She was an early president of the Garden Club of America and compiled a collection of slides and photographs of exceptional American gardens that document a history now largely lost. (Her slide collection was the core of the GCA collection that now is housed at the Smithsonian Institution.)
In 1955, the estate, having been neglected for several years following the death of Mrs. Sloan, was purchased by William and Kathryn Moss. With their 10 children, they set about reclaiming the landscape. “Every Saturday,” recalls their daughter Katy Moss Warner, a horticulturist and president emeritus of the American Horticultural Society, “we would all go out weeding and trimming a quarter mile of hedges. Gardening was not in our family heritage at all, but the structure of Steele’s garden was so good, so strong, that it emerged as we worked.”
The family has maintained the landscape since 1955, respecting the original designs and not making any major changes. Says Ms. Moss: “My family made a significant contribution to this important garden by maintaining it as best we could all these years.”
The Moss family now hopes to find a buyer who will continue the tradition of garden stewardship at Lisburne Grange. The 17-acre estate is now offered for sale through Heather Croner Real Estate Sotheby’s International Realty.
This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 Newsletter of The Garden Conservancy and is reprinted courtesy of the Garden Conservancy.
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