Across the grass from the American Renaissance Water Garden
(left) is the Sapphire Pool and the Arts and Crafts Garden
(above). When designing these gardens, Fleming was heavily
influenced by the work of Edith Wharton — a friend of the home’s
architect who authored a book on Italian villas — and designers
Edwin Lutyens, Harold Peto and Cecil Pinsent. “They are my
heroes [and] are much a repertoire of the garden,” Fleming says.
Family Story
“Having a narrative garden was very much a part of my
thinking,” Fleming says, “telling a narrative story and
then, more than that, relating it to my own personal
experience.”
The Bellevue House is now home to about twelve
gardens, Fleming says. “Each of them is named and tells
the story of my life and my family and my own history.”
The American Renaissance Water Garden features a
statue of Pomona, the Roman goddess of orchards,
presiding over a Villa Lante-style table. In addition to
Italy’s Villa Lante, Fleming says this particular garden
references other gardens familiar to Ogden Codman:
The screen behind Pomona is based on a Codman sketch
of a garden in the Netherlands. The fountain, which can
be manipulated by a button at the head of the table (a
position held by a granite relief of Fleming himself )
references the trick fountains of the Schloss Hellbrunn
Palace outside Salzburg. “The metaphor here is the
waters come out and they flow down the Fleming family
table and they go out the head, down the rill and toward
the children’s fountain,” he says. “You go from father to
son and daughters then to the grandchildren and the
grandchildren’s pool, which is the Sapphire Pool.”
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