Since 1964…

… KGC members have designed, planted, and maintained the Seaside Garden at Greenwich Point. A volunteer committee plants and tends to the horticulture in the garden; all the trees, shrubs, and perennials. The Knollwood Garden Club organizes lectures, musical benefits, and other fundraisers to raise awareness of the Seaside Garden for the benefit of all Greenwich Residents.

History of the Seaside Garden*

The land of Greenwich Point, originally Native American summer fishing grounds, was once two islands connected to the mainland by a sand bar. It was transformed into a grand coastal estate by a Scottish American merchant, J. Kennedy Tod and his wife, Mary Tod. 

In 1918, the Tods commissioned Marian Cruger Coffin (1876-1957) to design and build a walled garden on their estate. Ms. Coffin, a relatively new designer, graduated from MIT in 1904 as one of four women in Architecture and Landscape Design among a class of 500 students. She frequently used classical proportions and geometric forms to create award-winning gardens.

Completed in 1920, the Seaside Garden offers a stunning view of Long Island Sound, Captains Harbor, and the Cove in Old Greenwich. Ms. Coffin’s skillful placement of the Palladian-style garden wall provides both a timeless view of the Southern Connecticut and Long Island’s coastlines, and a treasured experience in nature. 

Ms. Coffin became the first Female Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and, starting in 1928, worked with her friend and cousin Henry Francis du Pont at Winterthur’s garden in Delaware for over 30 years. In 1930, she received the Architectural League of New York’s highest award in landscape architecture for her landscape designs in New York and Connecticut. Ms. Coffin is also known for her landscapes at the New York Botanical Garden, the harbor front at Watch Hill, RI, and the campus plan of the University of Delaware.

Originally over-planted in a wide oval, with an abundance of roses and perennials surrounded by a short Buxus (Boxwood) hedge, the Tod’s display garden favored a blue and white color scheme. That first high-maintenance, showy, and floriferous garden was ripped out six years later and replaced over time with several low-maintenance alternatives. The center circle, once a small pond, reflected the sky. Victorian bowers, a pergola, a summer house, statuary, a path down the middle flanked by perennials, and a three-tiered central fountain came and went over the next century. 

In 1945, the Garden Club of Old Greenwich restored Mrs. Tod’s once lavishly-planted rose and perennial garden, under the chairmanship of Mrs. Donald Ambler. It has been re-designed and curated over time as new garden philosophy and methods arise. Most recently, the committee is limited by a rising deer population and climate change. We now plant with deer-resistant, drought-resistant, and more native plant material

In 1964 the Knollwood Garden Club assumed responsibility for the care and preservation of the Seaside Garden, as it became known, while nformally it is still referred to as the secret garden on Tod’s point. The Seaside Garden is the only remaining public coastal garden on the Eastern Seaboard. It provides us with an ever-developing ephemeral experience.

*Sources: Greenwich Historical Society, The Watch Hill Conservator, Wikipedia and others