Community Corner
Picture Connecticut: The Sunken Garden
The latest installment of the Picture Connecticut series.
![The Sunken Garden at the Hill-Sted.](https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/103600/20230428/050125/styles/patch_image/public/sunken-garden___28164715374.jpg)
FARMINGTON, CT — The latest stop on the Picture Connecticut tour takes us to the iconic estate called Hill-Sted in Farmington, which is now a living museum.
There, we find the Sunken Garden.
According to museum officials, Hill-Stead's Sunken Garden occupies nearly an acre and features a summer house, brick walkways, and a stone sundial inscribed with a Latin phrase Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, which translates as "Art is Long, Life is Brief."
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The octagonal garden is home to more than 90 varieties of perennials and annuals in thirty-six beds, museum officials tell us.
Theodate Pope created the original garden for her mother, Ada Pope, and it was in place on the site in 1901 when Hill-Stead was completed. In the early 1940s, wartime shortages of labor and supplies forced Theodate to seed over her mother's garden with turf. The summer house stood guarded by a lone crab apple tree until 1986, when the Connecticut Valley Garden Club and the Garden Club of Hartford undertook the project of funding and restoring Hill-Stead’s Sunken Garden, museum officials tell us.
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Visitors are welcome. Painters, school writing groups and photographers frequent the garden. Each year, it is the site of Hill-Stead’s annual Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, and it is available for special occasions, including weddings and corporate events.
See more here.
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Picture Connecticut is a weekly Patch series featuring unique images of the state, past and present.
Previous featured images:
- Lafayette Tour Monument, Vernon
- The Pinchot Sycamore, Simsbury
- Bob's Discount Furniture Studios, Manchester
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