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The garden at Hillwood is divided into quadrants separated by paths, with a shallow pool in the center. Each quadrant contains a low hedge of English boxwood tightly clipped into a fluid,  organic pattern of scrolls. The French doors from the mansion’s west wing open onto a
terrace that features an elegant swan fountain of pink marble, dropping water into a basin
lined with glass tiles. A small frog fountain spews water into a second basin at the
opposite end of the garden. Water flows from both basins, spilling over into limestone
rills and rippling into the center pool, where lead putto riding a dolphin and a seahorse
send a stream of water splashing into the middle of the pool. On a pedestal above the
frog, a terra cotta statue of Diana, goddess of the hunt, seems to be walking out of the
wooded area behind the garden, as if she is returning from the chase with her faithful dog
at her side. White marble sphinxes are perched on the balustrade of the terrace, surveying
the scene below. |
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 The entire garden is enclosed within a high wall of English ivy,
lending a sense of safety and privacy to the space. Unexpected niches at the center of the
north and south sides of the ivy wall, graced with tall, limestone urns and comfortable
chairs, provide an even more intimate experience. Guests frequently linger in these spaces
to enjoy the relaxing timbre of trickling and splashing water, while they study the
sensuous shapes of the boxwood scrolls placed so carefully within the very formal,
straight lines of the French parterre garden’s foundation. |
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Marjorie Merriweather Post commissioned two prominent landscape
architects, Umberto Innocenti and Richard Webel, to design and build a garden that would
complement her collection of eighteenth-century French furnishings and decorative arts
displayed in the French drawing room of the mansion. Innocenti and Webel of Long Island,
New York, designed a garden that featured all of the typical elements of an
eighteenth-century parterre garden, scaled down to fit into a space already occupied by an
enclosed garden with a fish pond. |
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