Treasures of New Jersey
Treasures of New Jersey: The New Jersey Botanical Garden
6/19/2024 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
A gilded age estate transformed into the New Jersey Botanical Garden at Skylands.
From its origins as an exclusive private estate, to its transformation into a botanical haven, discover the historic New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands on Treasures of New Jersey. Lush gardens with unique plant species and a Tudor mansion with more than a century of history are open to the public as part of Ringwood State Park.
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Treasures of New Jersey is a local public television program presented by NJ PBS
Treasures of New Jersey
Treasures of New Jersey: The New Jersey Botanical Garden
6/19/2024 | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions
From its origins as an exclusive private estate, to its transformation into a botanical haven, discover the historic New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands on Treasures of New Jersey. Lush gardens with unique plant species and a Tudor mansion with more than a century of history are open to the public as part of Ringwood State Park.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship[upbeat lively music] [upbeat lively music continues] [light music] - [Narrator] A public garden on a once private estate, where a 1920s manor and cultivated landscapes are preserved in the Ramapo Mountains.
- The Botanical Garden started really as a playground for the rich and famous in New Jersey.
- You can walk through the more formal gardens, then you can be immersed in the woods.
- This is so great.
Look at this, look at the leaf color on that.
- [Narrator] A place where a dedicated team of volunteers stepped in to help decades ago.
- These gardens would not be what they are without the volunteers.
- [Narrator] This garden of the Garden State has something for everyone.
- It's a place of serenity.
- [Rebecca] There is 96 acres to explore, and you will find magic.
[bright music] - [Narrator] "Treasures of New Jersey: "The New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands."
[gentle music] From azaleas to lilacs and along a primrose path, this is a landscape designed to display carefully chosen botanical species.
There are trees planted to draw the eye to sculptures and scenery.
The New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands holds a unique part of history in Passaic County on the state's northern border.
The garden surrounds a 1920s era manor house and includes elaborate farm buildings from the early 20th century, all part of Ringwood State Park.
- So New Jersey Botanical Gardens is not a formal gardens like you might see in the New York Botanical Gardens, or other gardens.
We don't have a fence around our gardens.
We have wild animals who come in and out.
So it has more of a relaxed feeling here.
- [Narrator] Ken Merz became president of the New Jersey Botanical Garden's Skylands Association in 2021.
- Good morning, Gus, how you doing?
The Skylands Association is a volunteer organization that maintains most of the gardens within the New Jersey Botanical Gardens.
- Here, so- - Oh, these look nice.
- Mmm-hmm- - They just started blooming, didn't they?
- [Narrator] Merz also heads up the volunteer team that raises plants in a small historic greenhouse for an annual fundraising sale.
- This is so great.
Look at this, look at the leaf color on that.
- [Volunteer] Yeah, and look at the flower coming down in that.
- Yeah, yeah, flower's in there.
- [Narrator] Other teams give tours of the grounds and the manor house, and still more Skylands Association members keep the specialized gardens in shape.
- My first time here was when I was doing hiking through the trails and kind of stumbled on this, and not too many people know about the New Jersey Botanical Gardens.
They're a real secret gem that is out here.
- If you came for a hike, which are free on Sundays, we have volunteers who lead those hikes, and they'll start out around the Carriage House, and go through the Perennial Garden, the Annual Garden, the Hummingbird Garden, and the Pollinator Garden, and they'll make their way down here.
- [Narrator] Darlene Nowak manages the volunteers responsible for the Woodland Wildflower Garden, where work gets started as winter ends.
- You have to get rid of winter's debris, just like in your own backyard.
You have to rake.
You have to dig a little.
You have to move some rocks.
You have to clear away the dead stuff, and wait, patiently wait for the magic to happen.
These are Japanese candelabra primroses.
Their seeds, after bloom, fall into the water, and they naturally plant themselves in other places.
- [Narrator] Six weeks later, primroses lined the woodland path alongside small streams.
[light music] - The Woodland Wildflower Garden is basically woodlands, but it's cultivated woodlands, so that there are flower beds, there are trees, there are shrubs, there's water, there are animals.
It is a real woodland, but it's cultivated.
[light music] - [Narrator] Volunteer gardeners can be seen working throughout the grounds.
Diane Simon started at Skylands in 2014.
- This is a beautiful cherry tree season, and these are newly planted cherry trees, maybe four, or five years, and these are over 50 years old.
They're on their way out, and so many people come and take pictures of them.
They're really beautiful.
[gentle music] - [Narrator] Management of such a large public garden requires coordination with the State Park Service.
- When the landscape was done here, most of it was done with vistas and views.
[bright music] One of the views, it's, I think, a half mile long double allee of crab apples.
That was part of the landscape architect's vision was to have these views available.
- [Narrator] Rich Flynn retired as the park's landscape designer after more than 30 years, but he still works part-time to help maintain Skylands' beauty and oversee historic projects.
[gentle music] - [Rich] There were gardens, where the Annual Garden is today.
There were large scale gardens right there.
- [Narrator] Flynn and the small park staff tend to the gardens.
They even ready plants in greenhouses over the winter.
They're responsible for all of Ringwood State Park, which covers more than 4,400 acres, much of it in the Ramapo Mountains.
- [Rich] We're out of the Botanical Garden, you know, official 96 acres right now.
- Okay.
- There's a trail off on the right here.
That's the one that takes you up to Mount Defiance right over here.
It's a switchback.
It goes, zigzags up the mountain, and it affords you a nice view of the Botanical Gardens up there.
[gentle music] - We have 40 state parks, 11 state forests, and one botanical garden.
- [Narrator] Rebecca Fitzgerald, administrator of New Jersey State Park Service, spent 11 years as Ringwood's superintendent.
[camera shutter clicking] - These gardens would not be what they are without the volunteers.
You know, they're friends to the State Park Service.
They're friends to our staff.
Many of these people have worked side-by-side for more than 25 years.
During my career here, one of the big projects that the volunteers helped fund and coordinate was the restoration of the Lilac Garden, and I never really knew it was a thing to restore a garden, or specific plants in the garden, and it was a multi-year project.
And the first year that they were in bloom after all of the work had been done, what a difference it made.
[light music] - [Maja] Welcome to the free cell phone audio tour of the New Jersey State Botanical Garden.
- [Narrator] As ambassadors for the Botanical Garden, Skylands Association volunteers created a free audio tour.
- Numbered stops- - I love it.
That's one of our volunteers, Maja.
That was Maja doing that- - Enter your stop number now, or press *0.
- [Maja] The Lilac Garden.
On the east lawn immediately next to the formal terraces is Skylands' extensive lilac collection.
It contains over 100 varieties.
- So the fact that NJBG Skylands Association could do this on our behalf and on the visitors' behalf, because this is fantastic, this is why they're invaluable to us.
[light music] - [Narrator] The history of the formal gardens the volunteers helped to save dates back to 1891, when Francis Lynde Stetson, a wealthy Gilded Age New York attorney, started purchasing farmland.
- The botanical gardens really started as a playground for the rich and famous, who developed this property early on, really lived in New York City, but they used this as their country getaway.
And so, that's really where the beginnings of this, of the park started.
- [Narrator] Stetson named his country estate Skylands Farm.
- These are the original gates which were the main entrance to the Skylands Farm.
They're up at the far reaches of the estate, which has 1,100 acres.
[gentle music] - [Narrator] Stetson made his Gilded Age fortune representing railroads and the U.S. Steel Corporation, working with J.P. Morgan and President Grover Cleveland.
- The landscape was designed during Stetson's time by Samuel Parsons, and he came from a family that were in the nursery business.
He was also a superintendent for Central Park.
- [Narrator] Photos show the species Stetson and Parsons planted.
Some are still standing.
- The conifer right here, that was planted during the Stetson period.
So that's over, that's probably 150 years old.
[gentle music] - [Narrator] The landscaping around the house was just getting started when Stetson completed construction in 1897.
- [Rich] It was just like a sprawling home with a lot of verandas, a lot of gables, part stone, part cedar, you know, wood, very unlike what we have today.
This box, this has the Stetson house plans.
Yes, it is pretty fragile.
- [Narrator] Flynn found and rescued blueprints from that era, some of the many artifacts he's collected.
- He had a billiard room, and a, like this here shows the, it's called a loggia, where you pull your wagon up.
Yeah, it's neat to see and to have 'em, and know what, you know, each room inside the building, you know, we don't have any photos of the interior.
- [Narrator] There are photographs of the areas outside the massive house, including a nine-hole golf course, where sheep sometimes grazed.
- It was a gentleman's farm.
I mean, he obviously wasn't the farmer.
He had his staff do that kind of thing.
But people with, that were well-to-do had these working farms.
Skylands Farm, that was probably a sign on the main road.
This is another sign that we found.
This one says, you know, Skylands Farm, obviously, but Sterlington, New York.
Their train station and post office was called Sterlington.
So this was a mailing address, not the actual address.
He had a piggery, and there was a sheepfold.
So he had sheep and pigs, he had dairy, and then he had lots of fields for silage and hay.
[gentle music] - [Narrator] Stetson built ponds and a gravity-fed water system, and he hired a renowned architect who specialized in farm buildings.
- This was where the, they would bring the horses here to get hooked up to the carriages.
[bright music] This was designed by Alfred Hopkins, and Alfred Hopkins at the time was the, you know, anybody with anybody that was anybody hired Alfred Hopkins to lay out all the farm buildings for their estate.
It's amazing.
I mean, this was done like early 1900s, so, you know, it's all granite, which was quarried mostly through, in this area here.
It's still called the Carriage House, but it's used by our friends' group, Skylands Association.
That's kind of their home base.
They have their offices there.
They also have a gift shop and visitor center inside.
- [Narrator] The Carriage House was one of many stone buildings featured in advertising when Skylands Farm went on the market after Francis Stetson died in 1920.
The headline, "America's Most Beautiful Estate," was attributed to Andrew Carnegie, one of Stetson's many celebrated visitors.
The buyer was another wealthy New Jersey estate owner, Clarence McKenzie Lewis, an investment banker, and a widower.
- Mr. Lewis owned property in Mahwah, which was kind of connected in the far end of his property, and they would sometimes cross paths on horseback.
So he knew of Mr. Stetson, and when the property came up for sale, he and his widowed mother bought the property.
[gentle music] - [Narrator] Although Stetson spent millions building his showplace, it reportedly sold for less than $250,000.
- [Rich] Clarence bought it mostly because he wanted to have gardens, and he had his own ideas on gardens, 'cause he was a collector of plants.
[gentle music] - [Narrator] His mother, Helen Lewis Salomon, focused her attention on the house.
- She didn't like the Stetson house, 'cause it was old, and she wanted something more, more of the English look.
- [Narrator] The Stetson house was demolished, and Lewis and his mother built an even larger 44 room manor house, choosing architect John Russell Pope to create it.
[gentle music] - [Rich] She had collected a lot of artwork, and stained glass, and furnishings, and rooms.
[gentle music] - So welcome to the great entry hall at Skylands Manor, and this is- - [Narrator] Tim Flaherty is in charge of volunteer-led tours one Sunday each month and by appointment.
- But there were prominent- - [Narrator] The Skylands Association charges a small admission fee, and tours are limited to the grand rooms on the first floor, except for glimpses of inlays in the leaded windows.
- I'm gonna ask you to carefully just go up to the first landing here, so you can see part of her stained glass collection with the natural sunlight coming through.
[light music] And you'll notice that right there, there is an etching of a farm worker there in the window.
- [Narrator] The stained glass panels are one of the original collections still in the house.
[light music] - When Mrs. Salomon was touring in the southern part of England, she saw this room in whatever home it happened to be in, and she said, "I like it, I want it.
"Dismantle it, and we're gonna bring it home."
- [Narrator] Much of the original furniture and artwork is gone, but the evidence of enormous wealth is everywhere.
- [Tim] So, this is the breakfast room.
All of this is Venetian marble, brought over from Italy, from, and but was originally installed in the home on Fifth Avenue in the city, and then brought over here.
[light music] This is the parlor, and this is one of those other rooms that Mrs. Salomon saw in Europe, and said, "I like it, I want it.
"I'm bringing it back."
The room actually comes from Derbyshire, in Upper England, and she basically had this room disassembled and brought back.
- [Narrator] Helen Salomon became ill before Skylands was completed.
She died in 1927, and never lived in the house.
[light music] [gentle music] Clarence Lewis hired famous landscape architects, and spent the next 30 years transforming Skylands from a working farm to a botanical showplace.
[gentle music] - So this is Mr. Lewis' favorite room, why?
Because Mr. Lewis liked vistas.
So here, he could sit here doing his work, and look out, and then he would see this beautiful terrace out here.
- [Narrator] The terraced gardens still feature the types of trees and plants Lewis chose, like magnolias and peonies.
[light music] He also had a special interest in species native to New Jersey.
- He collected from, you know, South Jersey, you know, the Pine Barrens, and there's an area near where the Moraine Garden is, which was also an area that had like a bog pond with plants from the Pine Barren area.
- [Narrator] In his office on the second floor of what used to be the estate manager's home, Flynn keeps a collection of artifacts that helped him piece together the history of the Lewis estate.
- [Rich] Clarence Lewis, he was an engineer, was a very meticulous kind of a guy.
He kept a lot of records of everything.
We've got a [mumbles], "Country Life" magazine, which from 1937, which has Skylands Manor in it.
This is the map of the whole property.
And then they have little photos of different garden areas, the Annual Garden, this is the Swan Pond, Octagonal Garden, and this is the Azalea Garden.
- [Narrator] Skylands became a registered nursery, selling plants from its growing collections.
[light music] - Everything was labeled.
All the plants were labeled, and he made these labels.
This is the machine from the 1920s that you had a roll of this copper banding.
You'd feed it through here, and this would, you would have to press this down, and you could, you had to dial it to whatever letter you wanted, and then press it down, and it would advance, and he'd punch a hole in it, and he would use a stake, like one of these, attach it to that, and then stick it in the ground next to the plant.
So then, and, well, when plants died, I mean, we'd digging around replanting stuff, and we'd find these tags just sunk in the mud.
So I saved them all.
[birds chirping] - [Narrator] The estate also became known for a species discovered here.
- This is called Skylands, named for Skylands.
It's the Picea Orientalis Skylands Aurea, and it's out in the market.
These needles have, when they were exposed to more sunlight, they will get this nice yellow cast to it.
Also, there's a climbing hydrangea that was named for Skylands as well called Skylands Giant, which is a climbing hydrangea, and Clarence noticed that here.
So we have that growing on the manor house here.
And that's also available on the market now, too.
[light music] - [Narrator] Clarence Lewis was able to keep Skylands through the Depression, World War II, and into the 1950s.
But times were changing, and he was in his 70s.
- Basically, he was having a hard time getting people who wanted to live as groundskeepers on the property.
He sold the property to a Christian liberal arts college here called Shelton College.
[gentle music] - [Narrator] After a zoning dispute with the town of Ringwood in the early 1960s, the college closed the Skylands campus, and put the 1,100 acres on the market.
In 1966, the state of New Jersey added the land to Ringwood State Park, using $2.2 million from its newly established Green Acres fund, tax money set aside to preserve and protect open space.
[gentle music] Once purchased, volunteers stepped in to help restore the gardens, forming the Skylands Association and pressing for state recognition.
[gentle music] in 1984, then Governor Thomas Kean signed legislation naming the 96 acres around the manor house The New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands, calling it, "A symbol of our state's natural "and man-made heritage."
[gentle music] To strengthen the protected status, volunteers helped add Skylands to the State and National Registers of Historic Places in the early 1990s.
But when Rebecca Fitzgerald started her job as superintendent of Ringwood State Park in 1999, the Botanical Garden needed more funding.
- We knew we couldn't do it alone.
Together, we are stronger.
So the State Park Service existed with this very small staff, relatively speaking, to this property.
Our volunteers through the Skylands Association were there, and we needed something else, and that's where the lease agreement came into place for Skylands Manor.
[gentle music] - [Narrator] The state signed a lease with the Frungillo Hospitality Group.
The company invested in the manor's infrastructure and interiors to make it both a bed and breakfast inn and a wedding and events venue.
[light music] - The initial plan was for the catering operation to be in the add-on portion of Skylands Manor that Shelton College added in the '60s.
However, those that had an interest in utilizing the building for weddings said, "We need this whole building," and this is where the two worlds collided.
- When you stay here, you have free roam of the house.
So you, if you have a wedding, or if you're just using the place as a bed and breakfast, you are allowed to go wherever you'd like.
[light music] - It was literally just figuring it all out step-by-step.
How do we mix public access, very engaged and passionate volunteers with a wedding venue?
That is really where we focused on the monthly tours that our volunteers host to ensure that we still have that opportunity for the public to enjoy the building.
[light music] [people chattering] [cheerful music] - [Narrator] The public is also invited to the manor during the Christmas holidays, when the volunteers decorate and celebrate history as a fundraising event.
- We decorate the bottom floor of the Skylands Manor, and there's a theme.
There's a small charge to go and walk around and see all the rooms and how they're decorated.
[light music] - [Narrator] While public access to the manor house is limited, there is no off season at the Botanical Garden.
The grounds are open every day, year-round.
- In the summertime, that's where some of the pollinator gardens that we have that are designed to flower during the summer months, [light music] and then we move into the fall.
The trees turn magnificent colors in the fall.
It's a great place to go for wandering and looking at the plants.
[upbeat music] And it really is very tranquil in the wintertime.
There are less crowds for sure, and people come here, and do cross-country skiing, 'cause we have a lot of flat areas that are very good for that.
[upbeat music] Then the springtime comes, and of course, then you get a burst of color.
[upbeat music] That leads us into our big plant sale in the first weekend in May, which is a major fundraiser for us.
It keeps the association going.
This courtyard is filled with tables and plants, probably a couple thousand.
[people chattering] [light music] I get to meet the visitors, and talk with gardeners.
I love to do that.
Yeah, that's a house plant.
That's called a scented geranium.
- Volunteers, come on in!
- [Narrator] The plant sale is another opportunity for the Skylands Association to sign up volunteers and members, because there is always work to be done.
- We need volunteers for working in the gardens, obviously, but we also need volunteers who work in an office, or work behind the scenes, helping us in the gift shop.
So very important to get a very diverse group of volunteers.
[people chattering] - Every week when we gather at the Carriage House and come down here, we walk the garden, and look to see what's different, what's new, what disappeared.
Have we seen this here before?
Because it's so different.
It is just so much fun to have that kind of comradery among all the volunteers who work here, and to share our excitement about this place.
- Okay, boss.
[Darlene laughing] [volunteer laughing] - [Narrator] In 2023, more than 770,000 people visited Ringwood State Park and the Botanical Garden.
[people chattering] - There are times when we fill to capacity.
We can't take any more cars in.
Those are the times I would say come early, or come late.
[light music] - There's a little bit of something for everybody.
You can walk through the more formal gardens, then you can take a walk out, and be immersed in the woods.
- There is 96 acres to explore, just to walk and be able to wander, or meander through all of them, and just sit with them, and experience them, and you will find magic.
You'll find that secret spot that maybe speaks to you more than any of the other spots, and it's an escape.
[light music] - [Narrator] This is a public garden with a private past, where each season shows off the reason Skylands' volunteers work to guarantee its future.
- We work to make it beautiful for everybody who comes here for a little peace, a little solace.
It's a place of serenity, and we try to keep it like that.
[light music] [upbeat lively music] [upbeat lively music continues]
Treasures: The New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands
Preview: 6/19/2024 | 30s | Preview a gilded age estate transformed:The New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands (30s)
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