Hildene – The Lincoln Family Home

Author's Comments

The house itself is symmetrical in the way Georgian Revival demands - balanced, restrained, almost severe from straight on. I have found it more interesting from the side, where the line of the building meets the line of the valley behind it and the geometry starts to argue with the landscape. Morning is the time. The east light comes across the lawn at a low angle in summer and rakes across the brick and the white trim in a way that gives the facade some texture it does not have at midday. The formal garden is the obvious subject and it deserves the attention. It was designed to be read from above, and from the right vantage on the terrace the parterre patterns come into focus - the colored beds laid out like stained glass against the dark green of the hedges. June through September is when it holds together. I have been in late August when the peonies were long gone but the phlox and the salvia were doing the work, and the geometry was still legible. What I keep coming back for, though, is the view past the garden. The Battenkill Valley opens beyond the formal hedges and the Green Mountains rise on the far side, and the composition - foreground geometry, middle-ground meadow, distant ridge - is one of those rare cases where a designed landscape and a wild one frame each other rather than compete. Bring something in the 35 to 50 range. Stand at the south end of the garden in early morning and wait for the haze to lift off the valley floor. That is the photograph.

Gallery