Ashintully Gardens

Ashintully Gardens is the name given to a 120 acre (0.5 km²) estate in Tyringham, Massachusetts that is maintained by The Trustees of Reservations. The name "Ashintully" comes from Gaelic and means "on the brow of the hill".

Description

The gardens blend several natural features into an ordered arrangement with both formal and informal beauty. These include a rushing stream, native deciduous trees, a rounded knoll, and flanking meadows.

Garden features include the "Fountain Pond, Pine Park, Rams Head Terrace, Bowling Green, Regency Bridge", and "Trellis Triptych." Urns, columns, and statuary provide ornamentation. Foot paths, bridges, stone stairs, and grassy terraces connect various parts of the garden.

In 1997, Ashintully Gardens received the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's "H. Hollis Hunnewell Medal", a prize established to recognize gardens embellished with rare and desirable ornamental trees and shrubs.

History

Ashintully Gardens was created under the guidance of two men: Robb de Peyster Tytus and John McLennan Jr.

Robb de Peyster Tytus

In the early 20th century, Egyptologist and politician Robb de Peyster Tytus assembled the estate from the merger of three farms in Tyringham and additional land in Otis. The land holdings of the estate with the three farms grew to almost 1,000 acres (4 km²).

On a hill overlooking the southern end of Tyringham Valley, Tytus built between 1910 - 1912 a white, Georgian-style mansion which came to be known as the "Marble Palace". The mansion's main façade featured four Doric columns and was spanned by thirteen bay windows. Its interior contained thirty-five rooms, ten baths, and fifteen fireplaces. Though the Marble Palace was destroyed by fire in 1952, the front terrace, foundation, and four Doric columns remain today.

In 1913, Tytus died at Saranac Lake, New York, leaving his wife, Grace, and two daughters, Mildred and Victoria.

John McLennan Jr.

A year later Tytus' death, his widow married John S. McLennan, a Canadian senator, newspaper owner, and historian. She gave birth in 1915 to one child before subsequently being divorced.

That child, John McLennan Jr., acquired this estate where he had spent all his childhood summers in 1937. He later moved into the farmhouse at the bottom of the hill. McLennan lived the rest of his life there and renovating the nearby barn into a music studio. In 1977 John began donating sections of the Ashintully estate to The Trustees of Reservations.

McLennan became an accomplished composer of contemporary music, including chamber and orchestral music and pieces for piano and organ. In 1985 he won an American Academy of Arts and Letters music award.

In 1996 John McLennan Jr. donated additional land to the Trustees. The land, including the Marble Palace ruins, the farmhouse and Ashintully Gardens, was donated with a reserved life estate for Katharine McLennan. Initially 18 acres reserved for Katharine she would donate 12 acres to the Trustees in 2003, retaining convert|6|acre|m2 upon which her cottage resides and she has garden access.

After her death the title for the remaining 6 will be turned over to the Trustees.

McLennan Reservation

Adjoining the Ashintully Gardens are parts of the remnants of the vast 1,000 acres (4 km²) assembled by Robb de Peyster Tytus.

John McLennan Jr. in 1977, in addition to his garden donation to the Trustees, he also donated 446 acres (1.8 km²) of the estate in Otis and Tyringham to establish the McLennan Reservation. The reservation was expanded in 1978, 1991 and 1995 by a total of 148 acres (0.6 km²), bringing the McLennan Reservation to 594 acres (2.4 km²).

References

* [http://www.thetrustees.org/pages/251_ashintully_gardens.cfm The Trustees of Reservations: Ashintully Gardens]
* [http://www.masswoods.net/future_land/cases/mclennan_res/index.html McLennan Reservation]