Friends of Raynham Hall Museum celebrated spring in the beautiful gardens of Joe and Mary Beth Donohue on Sunday, June 7. The afternoon around the pool was highlighted by a chat by horticulturist Richard Weir, as he took guests on a 20-minute stroll through the gardens on the property.
“It was wonderful of Joe and Mary Beth Donohue to invite us to their home to see their beautiful gardens and to support our wonderful museum,” said Harriet Gerard Clark, Raynham Hall Museum executive director.
The Donohues are the fourth owners of Elmwood, explained Joe, who is the Oyster Bay Community Foundation board president. The Greek Revival house was built in 1836 for Thomas F. Youngs. Charles L. Tiffany, the nephew of Louis Comfort Tiffany, was the next owner. The Allston Flaggs were the third owners. Elmwood was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
When the house came up for sale, Liz Watson said she and her husband, James D. Watson, were also considering buying it. Instead, she said a house close to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was in foreclosure when a “drug lord” was arrested. It turned out to be the perfect home for the Watsons. He served as president of CSHL for 40 years and after retiring in 2003, as chancellor.
Besides the gracious house, the property still has some of its original “dependencies,” including a gazebo, tool shed, ice house, greenhouse, barns and a brick coach house built in 1918 by Tiffany. Richard Weir said the water tower is still there and is historically significant. The greenhouse was already in disrepair and there is a little new little greenhouse there. The barn was lost this past winter to snow-load, but they intend to rebuild it.
The current garden was designed by landscape architects Innocenti & Webel. North Hills Garden Design assisted Mary Beth in doing the garden planning around the pool area, which includes a cutting garden, a little vegetable garden, the summer flowering plants and the perennial bedding plants.
Of the tour, Weir said, “I was highlighting, along with Mary Beth, items that were of horticultural interest in the garden such as color combinations and plant selection. We focused on parts of the garden that are very old. Plants remain from about the early 1900s and are preserved beautifully. Then there are the new garden areas, including the pool, cabana and the cutting garden adjacent to the old boxwood garden of much greater formality.”
He added, “I did make a point to speak about some of the very majestic trees: a black walnut, a tulip and numerous oaks and beeches, as well as the severe problem of invasive vine inundating trees on adjacent properties.”
Weir said there is kudzu growing across the street from the Donohues.
When asked how people deal with the invasive plants, he said, “With great difficulty. Most of the problem is the wisteria, porcelain berry and euonymus. The most troublesome is the porcelain berry; birds eat the fruit and then spread the seeds,” he said.
Weir, a horticulturist trained at Cornell University, recently retired from Cornell Cooperative Extension in Nassau County.
For more information about Raynham Hall Museum and their events or membership, call 516-922-6808.
