The newly revitalized and award-winning Jay Estate Gardens at Jay Heritage Center in Rye, Westchester County, NY, are an expansive, educational, green space where American history, sustainability, and diverse cultural narratives all converge in an accessible, and visually powerful way.
Thanks to a unique public-private partnership between the non-profit Jay Heritage Center, New York State Parks and Westchester County, three garden “rooms” have been filled with a glorious palette of resilient and stunning shrubs, grasses and perennials selected by landscape architect Thomas Woltz of Nelson Byrd Woltz (NBW).
NBW created a dynamic plan that highlights the cultural history of this site. QR signage enhances the visitor experience. Preservation of architectural features like dry-laid stone walls and paths in the gardens illuminate the daily lives of the varied inhabitants from jurist, peacemaker, and New York State Governor John Jay and his descendants, to the Valentine Family – enslaved and freed women and men of African descent known to have lived, worked, and been buried at the Jay property.
In Room One, historic ash and cinder paths were protected, and their location revealed to mark the daily footsteps of real people from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries.
Visitors wend their way through clipped ilex (holly) raised beds and roses and pass vegetable beds which are tended today by a crew of more than 30 dedicated garden volunteers.
On any given day, the beds are overflowing with fresh strawberries, garlic, chives, kale, herbs and other produce that is harvested every Thursday and donated to a local food pantry.
Room Two contains a large Japanese Maple that is a living reminder of the later residents of the Jay Estate, the Van Norden and Talcott Families. A breathtaking selection of perennials including lilacs, peonies and bluebeard plants surround a reflecting pool that is a serene addition to this sensory garden room.
Protecting the site’s natural heritage has been of paramount importance. Reinterpreting the outdoor spaces as classrooms, NBW replaced over a dozen invasive species with over 36 different native plants.
Room Three boasts a “menu” of a la carte native plant choices suitable for any size backyard. The species selected are grouped in attractive palettes of three – all are drought resistant and require no pesticides.
Woltz selected native plants that are colorful like liatris, richly textured like “rattlesnake master” and sturdy like swamp milkweed and ironweed. They are guaranteed to bring butterflies, bees, hummingbirds and even turtles to delight their owners.
A companion meadow design by landscape architect Larry Weaner has also vastly increased the biodiversity of the gardens with the addition of native sedges and plants including little bluestem, mountain mint, and beardtongue.
The most breathtaking landscape feature in the Jay Estate Gardens is an almost 100-foot-long arbor covered in cascades of blush pink “New Dawn” climbing roses. The fragrance is positively heady. The roses bloom twice a year each June and September.
The structure pays tribute to the ingenuity and talents of early American landscape architect Mary Rutherfurd Jay (1872 – 1953). The great-great granddaughter of John Jay, she grew up on the estate, eventually studying design and horticulture at MIT and Harvard’s Bussey Institute.
Her ability to deftly adapt gardens to any soil, style, or size constrictions later became a signature of her work. Today, the home that inspired her career is reimagined as accessible parkland and a center for horticultural education and environmental stewardship.
A version of this essay, one of a series about landscape architecture in NY State Parks and public spaces, first appeared on the New York State Parks & Historic Sites blog.
Photos, from above, provided by Jay Heritage Center/State Parks): Sunset at the gardens at the Jay Heritage Center; the ilex and salvia in Room One; the reflecting pool in Room Two; and the rose arbor.
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