This Month’s Featured Article

It’s rare to find the peace one gets from walking through a garden on a perfect day. …

Lester Collins, famed landscape architect of the 20th Century responsible for Innisfree Garden in Millbrook, NY, probably understood the sense of tranquility and calm that can only be gained from God’s green Earth and a beautiful bloom. 

Raised a Quaker in New Jersey, Collins found like minds in the husband-and-wife/artist-gardener duo of Walter and Marion Beck. The Becks commissioned Collins in 1938 while he was still a student at Harvard to transform their Millbrook estate into what is today known as “one of the most beautiful gardens in the world,” according to popular Travel Channel host Samantha Brown, of Samantha Brown’s Places to Love. 

A contribution to horticulture

“Tucked away in the town of Millbrook, Innisfree Garden has earned its right to be one of the most beautiful gardens in the world,” wrote Brown, mentioning the glacial Tyrrel Lake and the lifelong collaboration between the Becks and Collins. “Together they created the magnificent Innisfree Garden, taking the name from the poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats. … This might be the most unique of all the Hudson Valley walks on this list! Really take your time leisurely zigzagging through the gardens and imagine what kind of ancient paintings and views inspired the designs seen today.”

Clearly the Becks believed Collins could design an inspired garden for their beloved Dutchess County estate; the couple decided to formalize the gardens after hiring him to create a lush, lovely, and languid landscape. The-yet-to-graduate-Collins may have been green, but he was excited to dig in and plan a varied garden with progressive design concepts learned while abroad. 

Innisfree was Collins’ life’s work from 1938 until his passing in 1993. The Becks began transitioning it into a private estate in the late 1920s; after they passed, Collins helped turn Innisfree into a public garden in 1960. Throughout and beyond his 55 years of preening and pruning, his Earth-friendly ideas and garden management practices remained.

Innisfree was recognized for its contribution to horticulture when it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on September 3, 2019, one year shy of celebrating its 60th year. The recognition was no small feat; the designation carries with it a certain panache and historical significance, not to mention myriad benefits including an immense sense of community pride; support for preservation efforts and/or zoning flexibility; possible tax incentives, availability to grant dollars, and/or zoning flexibility; increased property values; increased tourism; possible consultation benefits; public recognition; and networking. 

But when the Becks hired Collins, thoughts of being named to the register were far from their minds. In fact, the Register wasn’t even established until 1966 when the National Historic Preservation Act was passed. 

Picturesque gardens

Located 90 miles north of Manhattan in Millbrook, Innisfree is now world renowned for its sustainable landscape design, as well as its uncanny ability to make all who visit feel in harmony with the 185 acres of garden grounds that are at once soothing to the soul and visually majestic. According to innisfreegarden.org, the Becks wanted the vast grounds to mimic “picturesque gardens based on Chinese and Japanese design principles.” 

Collins focused on designing numerous “cup gardens,” as Walter Beck called them. Innisfree defines those as “garden rooms or focal points in the landscape” used as “unifying features,” like its 40-acre Tyrell Lake and the lake’s path “to integrate the many smaller cup gardens into one dynamic experience in the natural landscape.” 

Often described as a “quintessential American stroll garden,” Innisfree’s website details its design as a “remarkable synthesis of Modernist and Romantic ideals with Chinese and Japanese garden design principles [as] the garden harmoniously blends elements of nature with a rare sense of economy and grace.”

The blending of Eastern aesthetics with ecological practices at Innisfree is unquestionably part of its appeal. There’s a purity of nature here – a simplicity of the physical world – that makes one yearn for a meadow to wander through on a misty morning or a waterfall to secretly spend the day in all alone. Innisfree is where one might go to stare mindlessly into a blade of grass; to contemplate the leaves falling from a tree, dancing with the wind; to question life while staring at the stillness of the lake; to maybe feel the cold, uneven yet somehow surprisingly rough edges of nearby stones; or, perhaps, to try to decipher the sounds of whatever animal may by trying to sneak by surreptitiously, unnoticed by any senses other than their own.

In life and inspiration

Collins travelled extensively, landing for a bit in Japan, picking up an appreciation for Asian simplicity and aesthetics. He reportedly gleaned much of his philosophy of sustainability and forward-thinking garden management from his time abroad – concepts that were considered ground-breaking during his. Many are still considered progressive, as Innisfree Landscape Curator Kate Kerin said Collin’s ideas continue to innovate. She spoke at length about his legacy recently with Main Street, and about how Innisfree continues to implement those guidelines to ensure it remains at the cutting edge of sustainable, efficient, and effective landscape maintenance techniques in 2025. She marveled at his foresight – especially considering what dire peril our earth and our climate are in presently.

The key, Kerin said, is that while Innisfree might have had the right tools in terms of its ideas, until recently it lacked one very essential element – funding – but that’s starting to change. 

Granting assistance to growth

“From 1960 to 2012, one person was paid to work there and not do any gardening, so I feel like in the past 10 to 12 years, mostly since 2018, Innisfree had more attention paid to the nonprofit itself and what we were doing in the community and what the garden needed to succeed – and it was always a fabulous place – and I grew up in the Hudson Valley, but what else could we do?” Kerin asked. “Then last year we got two big grants, and that helped with our really wonderful growth – with preservation, planning, and people understanding the garden – what was there, what is there, what we want to become – and giving us a road map to get there.”

That, said Kerin, was huge in terms of Innisfree’s growth – and its potential for future growth.

The first grant was for $15,800. The money was awarded from the Preservation League of New York State and the New York State Council on the Arts, via a Preserve New York Grant. The monies are for a specific part of the planning process, according to Kerin, namely for a cultural landscape report that will pull multiple items together on a report that she explained is a “standard preservation planning approach for historic landscapes.”

The second grant was much larger, to the tune of $318,864; it was awarded in late December 2024. It’s a matching grant through the Environmental Protection Fund Grant Program for Parks, Heritage, and Preservation, administered by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. It’s also for preservation planning work, a cultural landscape report, a preservation maintenance plan, and sustainable management practices. Innisfree must match those funds, but Kerin said a lot can be donated through in-kind professional services. That makes it much more doable, especially as many services have already been provided.

Preservation and practices

“There are really innovative practices being developed at Innisfree,” said Kerin. “We look and feel the way we do because of them, and we need to carry that forward as part of this historic preservation and also be able to teach others how to do this; it’s also about workforce development.”

Soon Innisfree will have a cultural landscape report and preservation maintenance plan, said Kerin, adding that the groundswell of support makes her job easier, as it does for all who have roots there, whether paid staff or volunteer helpers. Everyone, said Kerin, appreciates getting a kind word. They’re doing what they love, while knowing they’re making the world just a little more beautiful. 

“It feels terrific to have the support from the Preservation League, the NYS Council of the Arts, and the OPRHP,” she said. “It feels terrific to have that support and a real blossoming of community support. We’ve been getting more grants, even if they’re smaller. Last year we got to a new level of endorsement of the work we do from the industry, and it’s been significant from the major state organizations – both public and private. It really feels like we’re entering an important new phase.”

Programming

Meanwhile, Innisfree’s programming is constantly evolving.

“That’s the fun part; most people just come for the garden, but we started educational programming and giving tours,” said Kerin. “People from all over the world come, sometimes in small groups for private groups. They come because it’s beautiful but also because they want to hear about management practices. Our draw could offer the community a revenue generator and a resource as we gain in popularity.”

Of course, Kerin said “Innisfree tries to follow sustainable garden management practices as often as possible; it also tries to keep its garden organic and as toxin-free as much as it possibly can while managing invasive species. We try everything before we use even a small amount of herbicide. We’re always trying to avoid that as much as possible.”

Additionally, Innisfree has no wells; it “basically uses rainwater. The garden sits in very little water, which flows in and out of the site, and rain fills up the lake in the center.” The approach is pretty cut-and-dry. Kerin explained that “Collins figured out a way to pump water from the lake to the reservoir, drawing the most sediment-rich layer of that lake out. This process controls algae growth; it starves the plants you don’t want, like a closed-loop-compost-system where nothing leaves the site. In creating this cycle, our water is filtered, our plants are fed, our fountains, streams, and waterfalls all aerate the water. Even soaking into the ground and going back to the lake is another layer of filtration. It’s really a clever take, if you think like a radical pragmatist. When I hear about how some of these ideas work, I think, ‘I would never have thought of these.’ ”

Managing water this way is called hypolimnetic withdrawal; communities like Washington, CT, rely on the practice, according to Kerin. The method exports water in a lake or pond. She adds, “Collins started doing this at Tyrrel Lake long ago, and now this process is starting to get attention internationally.” The practice was defined by sciencedirect.com as “a lake restoration method that is based on the removal of phosphorus along with near-bottom water … it’s about balancing between effective phosphorus removal and maintenance of the thermal stratification of the lake.” •

To see aesthetics and ecology align, go to Innisfree Garden at 362 Tyrrel Road, Millbrook, NY; for more information, call (845) 677-8000 or visit innisfreegarden.org.