Client: Friends of Wethersfield and Wethersfield Foundation

The Wethersfield Garden Cultural Landscape Master Plan (WGCLMP) provides a comprehensive planning tool to inform effective preservation, stewardship, presentation, and management. These National Register-listed 20th-century formal gardens are at the core of a 1,200-acre estate. Owner Chauncey D. Stillman collaborated with Landscape Architects Bryan J. Lynch and Evelyn N. Poehler to shape these hilltop gardens from 1937 to 1979. Heritage Landscapes prepared a deeply historically informed master plan for the Garden.

• Research and build a chronology to document changes in the physical landscape
• Develop a 1979 landscape plan
• Highlight garden character with axial and cross-axial organization and topographic change
• Prepare existing landscape plan from historic and aerial images and fieldwork
• Define three landscape character areas
• Assess significance, continuity, and integrity of existing features
• Employ historic and current repeat views to communicate continuity and change
• Value original plants and the patina of age in preservation treatment

This master plan aids a small non-profit in stewarding the garden’s identity, retaining and renewing landscape character by area and component landscape. Recommendations include utility upgrades, masonry repairs, vegetation removal and replacements, and materials conservation. Preservation and sustainability recommendations address climate conditions and multiple invasive pest pressures, such as Beech leaf disease, that are compromising the character and experience of the garden. The WGCLMP was enabled through a Garden Conservancy grant and key actions are already underway.

Wethersfield Garden Cultural Landscape Master Plan, Next Steps consultation

Heritage Landscapes LLC

"As a result of the sweeping and hugely helpful Cultural Landscape Report, we now understand better the importance of looking at discrete garden areas in a scaled, holistic manner."
Tara Schafer, Director, Wethersfield Foundation