The Gardens
The 409 acres of Planting Fields includes an extensive collection of gardens, including: the Italian Garden, Cloister Garden and Circular Pool, Children’s Play House, Rose Garden and Perennial Garden, Synoptic Garden, Sensory Garden, Heather Garden, Dwarf Conifer Garden, Hydrangea Collection, Day Lily Garden and Dahlia Garden.
The grounds also include 2 greenhouses, the Main Greenhouse and the Camellia Greenhouse.
The Italian Garden
Long Island has a superb climate for gardens, with the Long Island Sound on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. The relatively temperate climate allows perennials and tender shrubs to thrive. There is also very good soil, because four different glaciers left deep pulverized deposits as they melted.
In the Gold Coast era, eclecticism and historicisms dominated garden design as well as architecture. This led to the creation of gardens adapted from models from all over the world. At Planting Fields, the oldest and finest is the 1916 Italian Garden, the center of which is sunk below the surrounding level of the park to make it a secluded place, sometimes known as a giardino secreto. It protects plants from the wind and has the sensibility of a room for the garden parties Mai Coe gave.
The Italian Garden, more than any other part of the landscape, was the creation of Mai Coe. Since the mid-nineteenth century, well-to-do women often turned to the enjoyment of planning gardens and sharing with friends. These activities prompted the creation of garden clubs, including the Garden Club of America as a national organization in 1913.
The Camellia Greenhouse
W.R and Mai Coe’s passion for horticulture led them to create many marvelous features in the park, most notably the Camellia Greenhouse, a heated greenhouse. In the winter, the 200-plus camellias are in full flower with thousands of blossoms, generally from late January through early March.
The Coes bought their first camellias in 1917 from a nurseryman on the Island of Guernsey off the coast of England. The English tradition of growing camellias under glass dates back to the early eighteenth century, when they were first imported from their native China. Noblemen built fine camellia houses, which at that time rarely had glass roofs, as steel and glass technology for expansive glass structures was not developed until the 1830s, when large sheets of plate glass were first manufactured. This enabled Joseph Paxton, the Duke of Devonshire’s head gardener, to build the magnificent greenhouse called the Great Stove at Chatsworth in England. When architect Guy Lowell and Andrew Sargent designed the Planting Fields Camellia Greenhouse in 1917, they modeled its fine pedimented doorways on those of the Great Stove. The construction of the Camellia house was completed by the specialist greenhouse firm William H. Lutton.
In 1922, the Camellia Greenhouse was more than doubled in size by the addition of the east and west ranges, built under the Olmsted Brothers’ supervision. Since then, the building has been restored several times, most recently in 2015, when the greenhouse’s interior masonry, piers and exterior stucco finishes were repaired.
Only a couple of original camellias still grow at Planting Fields. New plants are added when needed. A favorite among visitors is the red-and-white-mottled Camellia Japonica cv. Mikenjaku Theaceae.
Main Greenhouse
The Main Greenhouse was built in stages between 1914 and 1929; the double-story hot house, originally called the Hibiscus House, was the last section to be constructed. The greenhouse was built by Lord & Burnham and designed by the Olmsted Brothers, who began working on the Coes’ estate in 1918. The complex was one of the last private winter gardens built on a Gold Coast estate before the financial crash of 1929, which sounded the death knoll for American country-estate building. The large greenhouse is one of a very few that survive, and probably the only one regularly open to visitors.
Collections in the Main Greenhouse include Orchids, Cacti, Begonias, Palms, Ferns and Hibiscus. Spectacular seasonal exhibits of poinsettias, Easter lilies, chrysanthemums and coleus. Both Greenhouses are open year round from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, every day but Tuesdays. Tripods are not allowed inside the green house.