5 Beautiful Things

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This new feature is designed to inspire you to look at the world around you, to take note of the season at hand and to capture it – in memory or on film – for posterity. I will be choosing five photos each week for Beekman1802.com with this aim in mind. We’re calling the feature, The Five Most Beautiful Things In The World This Week

 

Martha’s Sunken Garden

Outside her kitchen door, on the front side of her house, is a space Martha Stewart refers to as her sunken garden. It is a large expanse that connects her main house (the Winter House) to a second house on the property, called the Summer House. Visitors must access the garden by stepping down into it, hence its name. There is also a possible reference to the Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg, Florida: a four-acre botanical paradise filled with tropical and sub-tropical plants.

Each summer, once the weather is warm enough, Martha raids the greenhouse and brings out her enormous tropical plants: palms, agaves, cycads, cacti and succulents planted in vintage urns and handmade pottery by her favourite potter, Guy Wolfe. Their destination is always the sunken garden because of its long hours of exposure to sunshine.

The photos below were taken by Martha on a particularly foggy morning one day in June, 2008. I have always loved how mysterious and majestic the tropical plants look amid the wisps of fog, silhouetted against the grey. Martha’s placement of the plants is casual but purposeful: staggered height and shape, groupings of similar and dissimilar varieties, leading the visitor from one vignette to the next, between Winter House and Summer House.

 

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Photos:

All photos by Martha Stewart.

 

Andrew Ritchie is the creator of Martha Moments, a blog devoted Martha-Stewart related content and her community of supporters. He lives and works in Toronto, Canada, and has been a longtime friend of Brent & Josh, Beekman 1802 and Sharon Springs. Each week he’ll scour the world (wide web) to find the 5 most beautiful things to inspire you. Follow Andrew on Pinterest.