150 MILES OF GARDENS BLOOM IN NEW YORK’S HUDSON RIVER VALLEY

From hillsides of daffodils at Lyndhurst to masses of tulips at Empire State Park in Albany, public gardens reflecting 200 years of landscaping styles have the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area awash in color and bloom from spring until fall frost. Presidents, industrialists, naturalists, artists and landscape architects have long called the Hudson Valley home and many have enhanced the region’s rich natural and scenic wonders. Today, visitors can enjoy some of the country’s most stunning landscapes and gardens in this majestic river valley.

Following in the footsteps of the Hudson River School of Painting, many of the early giants of American landscape design were drawn to this extraordinary region where man could encounter nature in all its wild beauty. Andrew Jackson Downing, a Newburgh native, was one of the great arbiters of taste in 19th century America who in 1841 published “A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening.”

Downing also created a magazine called “The Horticulturist,” in which in 1847 he described the effect of a waterfall in the woods at Montgomery Place in Annandale-on-Hudson that can still be experienced today. “The memory of the world’s toil gradually becomes fainter and fainter, under the spell of the soothing monotone; until at last one begins to doubt the existence of towns and cities, full of busy fellow beings, and to fancy the true happiness of life lies in a more simple existence, where man, the dreamy silence of thick forests, the lulling ones of babbling brooks, and the whole heart of nature, make one sensation, full of quiet harmony and joy.”

Downing teamed up for a time on projects with architect Calvert Vaux, who likened landscape architecture to painting in which the artist “endeavored to divine the secret of a particular bit of nature’s design and use the idea in his own composition so that one would feel the scene to be thoroughly natural, familiar even, and yet transfigured and elevated by higher emotion.”

Vaux later collaborated with Frederick Law Omstead on the design of both Central Park in New York City and Downing Park in Newburgh. American Romanticsm took delight in natural forms, as expressed in the work of these creative masters, and also gave us landscapes such as Washington Irving’s Sunnyside in Tarrytown, where asymmetry surprises the eye and refreshes the spirit.

Spanning many generations, the lure and appeal of gardens and landscapes in New York’s Hudson Valley cross all borders and time. Enjoyed in their historical context, they create one of the most fascinating and beautiful series of gardens in the world. From river and mountain vistas, to antique roses, fragrant lilacs and rushing streams, the Hudson River Valley is an experience in horticultural history and landscape design that knows no equal.