Edith Wharton's The Mount: Where Architecture and Landscape Unite

Edith Wharton's Berkshires estate, The Mount, showcases the novelist's deep understanding of Italian garden design—knowledge she codified in her 1904 book Italian Villas and Their Gardens. Wharton designed the formal gardens herself to create a transitional space between house and the surrounding woodlands, meadows, and Laurel Lake. Her niece, the renowned landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, collaborated on the grounds.

Siting the House

Wharton placed the house on a rock outcropping to capture garden views and the lake beyond, embodying her observation that Italian country houses and their gardens "formed a part of the same composition." The formal axial plan reveals two gardens: a flower garden (viewed from Wharton's bedroom) and a sunken secret garden.

The Approach: Farrand's Three-Part Sequence

Farrand designed the entrance in three movements: an 800-foot allée of sugar maples passing a kitchen garden, greenhouse, and stables; a curving woodland road crossing a stream twice; and a final curve to a walled forecourt. Ferns and periwinkle line the second section. An alternative curved path from the forecourt leads over the hillside to the veranda—a magnetic pull even in rain.

Terraces and the Linden Walk

Grassed terraces descend from the veranda to a 300-foot linden-lined cross-axis leading to formal gardens at either end. Hemlock hedges and clipped arborvitae punctuate each terrace edge. The flower garden, more French than Italian in its floral abundance, features over 3,000 annuals and perennials restored to Wharton's intent. A dolphin fountain centers the axis before a trellised niche.

The Secret Garden

Beyond the fountain, a path enters evergreens and less formal grounds—exemplifying Wharton's concept of gardens as "a prolongation of the house" navigating toward wilderness. The sunken walled garden (80 feet square) features a rustic rock fountain, twig bench, and limited green-white palette with prominent astilbe. Ten-foot walls hold their own against towering trees beyond. The garden reflects a transitional period between Gilded Age ornamentation and the "roughing it" ethos of Adirondack Great Camps.

Farrand's Legacy

Beatrix Farrand—only female founder of the American Society of Landscape Architects—went on to design Dumbarton Oaks, Yale's grounds, and many seminal projects. Her biography and Wharton's Italian Villas and Their Gardens remain essential reading.

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