Florence Griswold Museum: The Grounds
During my adventure to the Mystic / Lyme area of Connecticut a few weeks ago, I visited Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, CT. This is the second post in a three-part series about my trip. In my first post, I described the experience inside the house itself. In this post, I cover the buildings and gardens on the grounds, including an education center, landscape center, studio, and several self-guided walks.
A wide range of flowers grow in the gardens behind Florence Griswold House. Visitors can pick up the Heirloom Blossom Guide, which tells the name of each plant listed by season along with their Latin names, plant type, and weather they prefer sun or shade. My favorite plant was a Bosc pear tree with almost-ripe pears. The plants in this garden represent Miss Florence’s garden around 1910. Archaeologist in 1998 excavated the borders of the original garden, and further research determined that the style of planting was Colonial Revival, first made popular during the 1876 Centennial celebration. Today, the Garden Gang volunteers maintain the space.
Near the garden was a reconstruction of a portable studio belonging to Benjamin Eggleston, a charcoal sketcher in the Lyme Art Colony. The studio was a simple box on wheels dragged around by Eggleston, although inside it apparently had an oil stove, rugs, shelving, and stools. Eggleston loved to work en plein air regardless of the weather, and this little study allowed him to see the environment without having to experience the worst parts of it.
One special garden was initially planted in 2021 and called “Solitary Garden”, an art installation designed by jackie sumell from New Orleans, LA with input from a woman referred to as “Y” and currently incarcerated at York Correctional Institution in Niantic, CT. The plot of land is the same size as a solitary confinement prison cell where imprisoned people are kept up to 23 hours a day. The retaining walls of the garden are made of summell’s proprietary “Revolutionary Mortar” made of ground-up sugarcane, cotton, indigo, and tobacco mixed with natural lime and water. All of these plants were once grown by enslaved people in the American South, often the ancestors of those ow in the American prison system.
The John & Dyanne Rafal Landscape Center held an exhibit of photos and tools related to Miss Florence’s gardens. A highlight of the exhibit was a green canoe belonging to Woodrow Wilson, who would later become President of the United States. His first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, was a highly regarded American Impressionist artist who spent many summers at Lyme Art Colony. She continued to paint throughout her life, even setting up a studio in the White House, until her sudden death from a kidney disease in 1914 at age fifty-four.
The Hedgerow Walk and River Walk afforded more pretty views of the landscape. A boardwalk along the Lieutenant River allowed visitors to see ospreys on a nest atop an elevated platform. Adirondack chairs on a dock or along the shore provided comfortable seating to watch the water flow by. Bow Bridge once spanned the river and provided a focal point for many works created in Lyme Art Colony. However, the wooden bridge was not sturdy enough for car traffic, so it was replaced by an iron bridge in 1914, and then replaced by a steel bridge in 1928, which still stands today.
In front of the house along the Hedgerow Walk near the road were three plaques added as part of the Witness Stones Old Lyme project, which honors the lives of enslaved people who lived in the area between 1670 to 1826. The coalition includes other Black history projects I have seen, including the Rhode Island Slave History Medallion Project, which I learned about during my trip to Historic New England’s Casey Farm, Day 2 of Historic New England Summit 2022, a talk on Rhode Island Cemeteries given by Bob Geake;and Black Heritage Trail in New Hampshire, which I visited during my Portsmouth trip in 2022. The three enslaved people born on the property were Temperance Freeman, Harry Freeman, and Crusa, all enslaved by William Noyes.
William Chadwick Studio was a plain, shingle-sided, two-story building set up to look like an active artist studio. This building came from Chadwick’s home not far away. Originally, the property was covered with several similar buildings, each providing art space at least one artist. A funny story from the studios was an ongoing prank to steal a blue couch. The artists took turns “kidnapping” the couch and bringing it to his own studio.
The rating for this museum will appear at the end of the third post in the miniseries.