Open Day & Digging Deeper with the Garden Conservancy
River Hills
Bedford, New York
Saturday, June 12th, 2021
Leslie Needham giving her talk ‘Digging Deeper: Designing for the Future with Cues from the Past’
On Saturday, June 12th Leslie and John Needham welcomed 300 guests to visit their garden, River Hills, as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days.
“River Hills is one of sixteen gardens featured in Larry Lederman’s book, Garden Portraits: Experiences of Natural Beauty, which is, in the words of garden historian Judith Tankard, “an exceptional personal record of some of America’s most important gardens now.”
Garden Map by Peter Lorenzoni
Leslie shared how she works to accommodate the present-day needs and interests of her family, while celebrating a site with a rich natural and cultural history in her talk ‘Digging Deeper: Designing for the Future with Cues from the Past’.
“Over the past decade, Leslie and her husband, John, have worked to restore their 1780s house and property to achieve thoroughly modern goals: blending the house and gardens into the larger environmental context and creating an enticing indoor/outdoor relationship, and doing all of this in an environmentally sensitive manner with a seemingly light touch.”
Guests gathered under a canopy of sycamore trees on the North Gravel Terrace
Thank you to the Garden Conservancy for the Open Days and Digging Deeper programs.