I took a long weekend and went to Long Island, NY for my nephew’s wedding. While I was there I decided to spend the afternoon with some family members at one of the local mansions that reportedly had beautiful gardens. I chose the Phipp’s Mansion, built in 1904, with the Old Westbury Gardens. A Victorian era, 200 acre estate with ponds, lakes, statuary, walking trails, manicured and untouched gardens. Wow! What a gorgeous property.
The only thing really missing was a vegetable and herb garden or a fruit orchard. Kind of odd to me. I suppose they had one when people actually lived there. To me, growing food is a most splendid attraction and seems like a wonderful feature for a garden estate. Not in the Victorian era, I suppose. The food gardens were probably mostly seen by the servants who used them to do their jobs. Interesting, huh?
We started with a very quick tour of the mansion. Not really what we were interested in. Then on to the gardens! The first thing we came upon (aside from a bride being photographed) was the West Pond. Complete with turtles!
Throughout the entire estate are these enormous grassy fields that are kept pristinely manicured. An unusual sight indeed. It’s difficult to see how long this stretch was. But if you squint you can see the rod-iron fence at the far end.
Next we came upon the Walled Garden. This turned out to be my favorite part of the estate.
The magnificent colors and combinations of plants and flowers with the lovely architecture in the background and lovely statues took my breath away.
We were tickled to find a stone bee hive in the garden for the bees to enjoy.
Here’s one that is absolutely in love with the flower. It looks like it’s hugging it! One of the ways to know that you are in a healthy garden is by the amount of bees and butterflies. And we definitely saw quite a few.
Here is a monarch that I managed to capture with my camera even though I was far away.
(I love my zoom!) 
Aren’t those colors magnificent? The Lotus Pond was quite breathtaking as well. I especially loved the architectural features with the contrast of the light green iron arches against the brick wall. Stunning!
The next place we wandered was to the Rose Garden. It wasn’t very impressive at this time of year. It did have some lovely features that were quite unique like the wooden trellis that circled all around the periphery.
There was a path that we wandered down that took us to a surprise!
Peacock planters in a secluded cove.
Not far from the peacocks we found the Thatched Cottage. This is a lovely miniature cottage with a white picket fence and, of course, a cottage garden!
There was a fun yard for the kids to play in while the adults relaxed.
My not-so-little kid is showing us how small the cottage and bench are. Cute!
On the way to another part of the property, the estate pool surprised us as we turned a corner. What a place for a pool party!
As we wandered through the grounds, we found ourselves upon a path to the East Lake. Along this lakeside path, my son quips “I can see why people want to have their weddings here, it sure is a romantic place!” And indeed it is. Here’s a view of the pool and house across the lake.
On one side of the lake is the Temple of Love. Stunning!
All along the trail was wilderness beauty! Well, that was about it. Hope you enjoyed the tour with us.
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