Blithewood’s Garden and Its Gardener
by Carol Lee

There’s a hidden gem—a sort of secret garden—overlooking the Hudson River on the Bard College campus. Blithewood is an Italianate garden that few people know about. I came upon it the first time about seven years ago, when as a member of the Rhinebeck Garden Club we visited it as one of a series of area gardens. The garden is spectacular.

This past June, as the sun came out just for the hour or so we spent together one afternoon, I met with Bessina Harrar, Blithewood’s gardener for the past three years. The grey mood that had settled over most of us because of the ceaseless rain was quickly dispelled by the variety of color exploding around us, because the flowers—wow!—they liked the rain.

Blithewood’s formal garden is terraced and the view from the top of the bluff, where the house is situated, still retains the magnificence of the original setting. Baluster boxes spilling over with verbena, euphorbia Diamond Frost, dichandria, lantana, and lavender heliotrope comprise the first splashes of color. From here, marble steps descend to landings that encourage you to pause and look at the gardens, the river and the Catskill Mountains before descending the steps to the next level. I stood and took in the expansive view and saw Bessina below, at the far end of the gardens in a pergola. This much photographed scene shows the vision of Blithewood’s originators as well as the splendor of its current guardians.

Like most classical Italianate gardens, a sunken fountain is surrounded by symmetrical beds. Gravel pathways lead you around and through the garden sections, allowing some intimacy with the individual flowers and shrubs, the various statues and a sundial, with its Robert Browning inscription, “Grow old with me, the best is yet to be.” Here I met Bessina, on her day off, clad in a black vest over a white skirt, low black boots and a cowboy hat. She was tall, tan and slim, and you just know she must be very strong.

Bessina recently wrote Blithewood, A History of Place, a book about the rich history of what happened right here. And what happened? Well, for openers, Henry Hudson sailed down the River that now bears his name (which the Indians called Muhheakantuck, or “river that flows both ways,” because of its opposing currents). He anchored the Half Moon within sight of what is now Blithewood on September 15, in 1609, to take on fresh water from the nearby Saw Kill. In a subsequent era, specifically from 1840 to 1880, the Romantic Picturesque Movement in architecture was conceived and flourished in this place, giving rise to the gingerbread style of Gothic-designed homes in the Hudson Valley, a style that was duplicated across the country as the population moved west.

The property that includes Blithewood had been owned by Margaret Beekman Livingston, who bequeathed large estates to each of her ten children, a move that we now appreciate for the protection it afforded the shoreline along our bank of the Hudson River with its grand historic homes and splendid gardens. In 1835 John Cruger, a later owner, sold a 95-acre parcel to Robert Donaldson, who is credited with uniting Alexander Jackson Davis, the architect and Alexander Jackson Downing, the landscaper, to design both his bracketed home and garden, which he named Blithe (“Happy”) Wood. In due course they developed the Romantic Picturesque Movement in architecture. Donaldson’s home and the books written by Davis and Downing on architecture and landscaping commanded the attention of Americans of all classes eager to build comfortable and affordable homes of their own. These three men developed a strictly American ideal of beauty, created and inspired by nature, rendering the landscape integral to the whole design.

In 1853, after making the bracketed board-and-batten home and landscape into everything he wanted it to be, Donaldson sold the 130-acre estate to John and Margaret Bard, who renamed it Annandale after her Scottish heritage. Their piety and devotion to community gave birth to the college we know today, which began in 1860 as St. Stephen’s Seminary with six students and two teachers. John Bard believed that education and the power of the church could improve people, communities and the nation. Margaret Bard was a woman of considerable wealth and vision herself, and became one of the first women to serve on the board of trustees of a college.

Here they built the Church of the Holy Innocents to mark the birth of their only son, Willy. Grief-stricken when he died at the age of 12, they moved with their three daughters to Europe, rarely returning. By 1897 the home, in foreclosure and disrepair, was sold to St. Stephen’s for $38,444. As part of his devotion to the college, John Bard had provided St. Stephen’s Seminary with a gift of 18 acres and $1,000 a year, enabling the college to purchase the estate. He also retained the right to occupy the Chapel of the Holy Innocents each year on All Saints Day.

Capt. Andrew Zabriskie, a real estate magnate, bought Annandale in 1899 and gave it back Donaldson’s name, Blithewood. He razed the abandoned bracketed house and built the current 30-room Georgian mansion and Italianate gardens in the opulent style of the Gilded Age. It was designed by Francis Hoppin, who built both the house and current garden as part of a single design “rather than as afterthoughts.” In 1951 Zabriskie’s son, Christian, who inherited the now 825-acre Blithewood property, was not interested in maintaining it, and gave it back to Bard College, enlarging the campus some twenty times over.

“Blithewood represents a family’s desire to create a vision of a beautiful home,” says Bessina. The land gave people the sustenance they needed to dream and build their homes and lives here. She believes the anchor of home shapes the character of people, noting that each person who passed through this unique landscape responded to the challenges of their lives in different ways. “It’s a quiet garden that doesn’t really get a lot of visitors,” she concludes.

The gardens are beckoning elaborate and well maintained, with many carefully arranged sections. The house, now the home of the Levy Economics Institute, is definitely off limits.

Blithewood, A History of Place, is available at Merritt and Oblong Book Stores, Phantom Gardener Nursery, and Bard College Book Store. Bessina will be signing her book at Merritt Books in Red Hook, on September 16th from 5 to 6pm. The date marks the second night that Henry Hudson anchored off of Blithewood in 1609—four hundred years ago.