Around Town

Journey to ‘England or France’ at Updated Parterre Garden [CORRECTION]

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After months of planning and “yard work,” a newly designed formal garden at Waveny House is in place and residents say they’re enjoying it. Those visiting the town park can now use additional benches as they walk through new plantings, boxwoods and shrubbery along the northern wall of the “parterre garden,” just east of the balcony behind the mansion. “Sitting on the back patio of Waveny and looking down at the parterre, you are transported to England or France,” said New Canaan Garden Club First Vice President Manda Riggs. New Canaan resident Cassidy Little visited the garden on a recent afternoon and is looking to use it as a backdrop for a photography project. “I’m very familiar with Waveny, I run through its trails almost every day in the fall,” she said.

Government

Parks Officials by 6-0 Vote Back Garden Club’s Plan for ‘Parterre Garden’ at Waveny

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Parks officials on Wednesday night voted unanimously in support of a longstanding nonprofit organization’s plan to redesign, re-plant and otherwise improve a prominent garden at Waveny. The New Canaan Garden Club’s plan for the “parterre garden”—located east of the balcony of Waveny House (down that first set of stairs, en route to the sledding hill)—is “timeless and classic” and “engages both visually and physically,” according to Tori Frazer, a member of the organization’s Waveny Walled Garden Committee. “This has always been a formal garden,” Frazer told members of the Parks & Recreation Commission at their regular meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. “We intend for it to stay a formal garden. All the plantings and the plans are classic and will stand the test of time.”

The commission voted 6-0 in support of the plan.

Around Town

‘Both Classic and Modern’: New Canaan Garden Club Pursues New Planting Plan for ‘Parterre’ Garden at Waveny

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One of New Canaan’s most venerable nonprofit organizations is seeking town approvals to improve a conspicuous area just behind Waveny House by re-planting it and adding benches for park users to enjoy. The New Canaan Garden Club since last year has sought to introduce a low-maintenance, deer-proof boxwood design for the parterre garden east of the balcony behind Waveny House—an area that currently is a “pass-through” for visitors, according to the organization’s president, Ellen Zumbach, but could be far more. “It is the entrance in a lot of ways to the park and the intention was to take you through and down the stairs and have a wonderful experience in your park,” Zumbach told members of the Parks & Recreation Commission at their Oct. 11 meeting, held at Lapham Community Center. “But I also felt that if we opened up the parterres so that it allowed for air and movement around them, that they could take their time getting down the stairs and enjoy what is an incredible view of the fields from the north and west wall.”

Zumbach and Tori Frazer of Club’s Waveny Walled Garden Committee presented a design to the commission to replace what currently are boxwood plantings with annuals in the middle, with additional plantings around the perimeter of a brick wall there.