The equinox, when day and night are equal, is regarded as a special even sacred time in cultures around the world. In our northern hemisphere, the autumnal equinox is traditionally associated with the abundance of harvest. Celebrate this cosmic event by gathering at Innisfree to view the moon and other celestial bodies. Come with a group or on your own, bring a blanket or folding chair, and gaze up at the heavens and out at this iconic landscape bathed in moonlight.
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5 hour walking tour exploring this powerful work of art. An iconic postwar design. Innisfree is now recognized as one of the world’s ten best gardens and listed at the highest level—exceptional national significance—on the National Register of Historic Places. In a story akin to the Great American Novel, learn about the people and ideas that shaped this living landmark. Find inspiration for your own garden exploring Innisfree’s timeless design strategies and timely, nature-based maintenance practices that create a memorable landscape experience with a remarkably small staff.
As part of our fall Community Day festivities, Innisfree will open an hour before sunrise so visitors can experience golden light dramatically flooding the garden, making everything and everyone look even more beautiful. As morning mist clears, fall colors will be doubled in reflections on the lake. BEST. DATE. EVER. Equally great as a solo adventure or one with family and friends. Come early with your camera, easel, or birding binoculars. Bring a picnic breakfast or lunch. Tuck in a novel and stay all day.
Celebrate the peak of autumn in the Hudson Valley during Innisfree’s fall Community Day. Be sure to check out Innisfree’s other Community Day offerings.
Innisfree is delighted to suggest this Community Day as an ideal stay-cation on Indigenous Peoples’ Day/Columbus Day. Thanks to a generous grant from the Northeast Dutchess Fund of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, we can offer FREE garden admission and discounted special programs to residents of these Northeast Dutchess County communities.
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5 hour walking tour exploring this powerful work of art. An iconic postwar design. Innisfree is now recognized as one of the world’s ten best gardens and listed at the highest level—exceptional national significance—on the National Register of Historic Places. In a story akin to the Great American Novel, learn about the people and ideas that shaped this living landmark. Find inspiration for your own garden exploring Innisfree’s timeless design strategies and timely, nature-based maintenance practices that create a memorable landscape experience with a remarkably small staff.
Join renowned horticulturist and Innisfree trustee Brad Roeller as he presents his top native plant picks for Northeastern gardens. This first lunchtime lecture will focus on shade-loving native perennials. Get ready to make beautiful, hardworking additions to your garden this spring.
This second lunchtime lecture will focus on sun-loving native perennials. Get ready to make beautiful, hardworking additions to your garden this spring. Join renowned horticulturist and Innisfree trustee Brad Roeller as he presents his top native plant picks for Northeastern gardens.
Get out and enjoy an early spring treat. Immerse yourself in the thousands upon thousands of heirloom daffodils, all planted for Marion Beck before her death in 1959. This special season preview weekend is open only to Innisfree members.
Get out and enjoy an early spring treat. Immerse yourself in the thousands upon thousands of heirloom daffodils, all planted for Marion Beck before her death in 1959. This special season preview weekend is open only to Innisfree members.
While most come to Innisfree to enjoy this uniquely beautiful 20th century landscape, it is underlain and in many ways shaped by rocks dating back almost half a billion years. Join local geology professor Steven Schimmrich for a leisurely walk looking at Innisfree through the eyes of a geologist.
Join avid birder, bird photographer, and local professional engineer Kyle Bardwell for an early morning walk at Innisfree in pursuit of the many birds that use this diverse habitat for breeding and migratory stop over needs.
Join expert horticulturist, naturalist, and Innisfree trustee Brad Roeller to explore and enjoy Innisfree’s spring blooming beauties. He will point out both native and garden species. Some are spring ephemerals, meaning the plants are only visible in the spring.
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5 hour tour exploring Innisfree, a powerful icon of mid-twentieth century design now recognized as one of the world’s ten best gardens and listed at the highest level—exceptional national significance—on the National Register of Historic Places.
Join regional leaders and members of wide-ranging faith traditions sharing music, reflection, and thanks as we walk through Innisfree garden together.
The program will include a blessing of seeds; please bring some with you.
Celebrate the peak of spring in the Hudson Valley during our Memorial Day Weekend Community Day. Free Garden Admission for Northeast Dutchess Residents + Innisfree Members. Japanese primroses, yellow foxgloves, and peonies should be blooming.
Innisfree will open an hour before sunrise for photographers and other artists, birders, and anyone else who wants to experience the sunrise in this remarkable landscape when warm, soft light dramatically floods the garden—Innisfree’s true golden hour.
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5 hour tour exploring Innisfree.
In honor of the holiday, Innisfree Garden will be open.
Spend an hour investigating some of Innisfree’s exceptional trees, native and otherwise, with noted horticulturist, teacher, and Innisfree trustee, Brad Roeller. Drawing on his work at the New York Botanical Garden, Cary Institute, and noted private estates, Brad will share what makes these trees so special as well as tips on how to successfully incorporate them into your own landscape.
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5-hour tour exploring Innisfree, a powerful icon of mid-twentieth-century design now recognized as one of the world’s ten best gardens and listed at the highest level—exceptional national significance—on the National Register of Historic Places.
Innisfree Garden will be open in observance of the holiday.
This year’s theme is Mid-Century Modern in the Landscape. This event provides vital operating support and allows us to continue our ongoing restoration and education efforts. There will be cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and music, plus inspirational moments in the garden.
Innisfree Garden will be open in observance of the holiday.
Spend an hour investigating some of Innisfree’s exceptional plants, native and otherwise, with noted horticulturist, teacher, and Innisfree trustee, Brad Roeller. Drawing on his work at the New York Botanical Garden, Cary Institute, and noted private estates, Brad will share what makes these plants so special as well as tips on how to successfully incorporate them into your own landscape.
Join fine art embroiderer Richard Saja for an exclusive two-hour, hands-on workshop exploring his process and creating “embellished toile.” Richard embroiders over toile de Jouy, a traditional textile form of densely printed, typically monochrome landscape vignettes.
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5 hour tour exploring Innisfree, a powerful icon of mid-twentieth century design now recognized as one of the world’s ten best gardens and listed at the highest level—exceptional national significance—on the National Register of Historic Places.
In many cultures, gardens are where the glories of nature as art are witnessed and celebrated. Join us for just such a morning. Innisfree will open at 4 am—two hours before sunrise—for those intrepid souls willing to get up early (or stay up late) to experience an unforgettable series of natural wonders and optional cultural and wellness programs.
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5-hour tour exploring Innisfree, a powerful icon of mid-twentieth-century design now recognized as one of the world’s ten best gardens and listed at the highest level—exceptional national significance—on the National Register of Historic Places.
Join avid birder, bird photographer, and local professional engineer Kyle Bardwell for an early morning walk at Innisfree in pursuit of the many birds that use this diverse habitat for breeding and migratory stop over needs. Although early September can feel like summer, numerous bird species are already en route to their wintering grounds. Arguably the greatest diversity of warblers and other songbirds will migrate through the Hudson Valley in September. We look forward to having you on our walk to aid in spotting some of these migratory gems.
Join acclaimed Shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) players Ralph Samuelson and Elizabeth Brown in a program of traditional Japanese and recent music. Originally developed by Zen Buddhist monks as a form of meditation, the quiet sounds of the shakuhachis, blending here with the sounds of the garden, will bring us into harmony with nature. Bring a blanket, sit back in the early autumn landscape, and enjoy a remarkable experience, especially for anyone interested in Japanese culture, world music, meditation, or a refreshing escape from the quotidian.
Federal Twist is set on a ridge above the Delaware River in western New Jersey, USA. It is a naturalistic garden that has loose boundaries and integrates closely with the natural world that surrounds it. It has no utilitarian or leisure uses (no play areas, swimming pools or outdoor dining) and the site is not an obvious choice for a garden (heavy clay soil, poorly drained: quick death for any plants not ecologically suited to it).
The “marginal garden” explores the boundaries between the wild and the cultivated, particularly the interface of where native plant species meet naturalising garden ones. Such places have ideally achieved a reasonably stable co-existence. Marginal gardens, including Innisfree, can be exciting and surprising, and can challenge our conceptions of both what ‘nature’ and ‘cultivation’ are.
Featuring music, reflection and thanks from a myriad of religious and spiritual leaders. Don’t forget to bring your seeds to be blessed. In partnership with Grace Church and St. Peter’s Church
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5 hour tour exploring Innisfree.
Inspired by the Japanese tradition of hanami, flower viewing, we invite you to enjoy the transient and transcendental beauty of Marion Beck’s heirloom daffodils.
Inspired by the Japanese tradition of hanami, flower viewing, we invite you to enjoy the transient and transcendental beauty of Marion Beck’s heirloom daffodils.
Innisfree trustee Brad Roeller believes that by learning about the environmental and biological factors which influence deer and their food choices, homeowners and professionals can implement informed strategies for deer-proofing their landscapes. Drawing on over forty years of gardening in deer country and his findings in the Deer Browse Garden he created at the Cary Institute funded by a ten-year grant from Cornell, Brad will share hard-won lessons on how to deter deer from browsing ornamental plants.
Help us celebrate National Poetry month with poet Paul Kane, who will discuss the convergence of poetry, nature, and ecology in Romantic ideology and how these ideas can be read in the Innisfree landscape. A professor of English and Environmental Studies at Vassar College, Paul is a scholar of both American and Australian literature.
Join artist and naturalist Tony Henneberg to look and listen for resident and migratory birds. Tony grew up in rural settings where he developed a keen interest in the surrounding wildlife, now the primary focus of his painting
Meet the Authors of Cold-Hardy Fruit and Nuts
Meet with head docent Judy Carson, and Landscape Curator Kate Kerin to become part of our Docent Program.
Celebrate Mother’s Day with landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5 hour tour exploring Innisfree.
Join painter and art historian John McGiff to explore the evolution of Romantic ideals in art. In 17th century Europe, when formal baroque gardens like André Le Nôtre’s Vaux-le-Vicomte were being built that express the rational order and mathematical clarity of the Age of Reason, the fine arts began to look at nature differently.
Join landscape curator, Kate Kerin, for a lively 1.5 hour tour exploring Innisfree, a powerful icon of mid-twentieth century design now recognized as one of the world’s ten best gardens and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.