Formal Garden

The grounds at Clayton must be thought of in terms of a great assembly of art, as valuable and as vulnerable as a great collection of paintings, set in a frame of equal value. Today, the art of the garden and its history is a subject of equal academic weight to art history or the history of architecture.

When Frances and Childs Frick entertained guests here in the 1920s and 30s, a favorite afternoon entertainment was a leisurely stroll down the brick path from the house to the formal garden. This path, lined with specimen trees collected and planted by Childs Frick, is considered part of the garden’s design.

The garden is located just to the west of the main parking lot and is accessed from there through a privet arch with high hedges on either side. Marian Cruger Coffin designed this garden for the Fricks in the 1920s, and it is considered one of her finest designs.

Coffin’s use of rectangles, circles, and arches mirrors that of the symmetrical design of the mansion. At the main axial crossing, she placed a circular reflecting pool with a central fountain jet, which not only reflected surrounding trees and passing clouds but also provided a strong focal point for the entire garden.

Throughout the garden, brick paths are both an aesthetic and practical feature of Coffin’s design, preserving the crisp, straight lines of the borders. Hedges were to be maintained at specific heights as noted on her blueprints; entrance points were enhanced with brick retaining walls and steps. The four garden rooms featured intricately scrolled boxwood designs in diamond or round patterns.

Yew hedges create the walls for four garden rooms. Two wide paths cross at the round pool and end at focal points – a perennial bed at the shorter, east-west one and a tall teak trellis at the long, north-south one. Low boxwood hedges are like a black pen underlining the straight lines and leading to the focal points. Within two of the garden rooms are boxwood scrolls and plantings of perennial flowers and roses. To complete the garden and connect it to the surrounding woods, Coffin designed an azalea garden with a more informal layout. This masterpiece of landscape design was impeccably maintained by a staff of twenty-two gardeners.

The classically styled teak trellis was designed by the New York architects Henry O. Milliken and Newton P. Bevin in 1931. Two brick structures on either side provided storage for furniture, china, and crystal as the Fricks frequently entertained in this area, often accompanied by music played from the platform to the right of the trellis. The trellis was restored by the Roslyn Landmark Society in 1986.