Fort Ticonderoga Publishes New Garden History Book to Celebrate Restoration of the King's Garden at Fort Ticonderoga

The publication's author, Lucinda Brockway, is a principal of Past Designs, a firm that specializes in the research, analysis, evaluation, design, and management of historic landscapes. The Hermitage, the home of President Andrew Jackson is among the many gardens to which she has served as consultant.

The publication of the book coincides with the completion of the Fort's eight-year-long restoration of the King's Garden at Fort Ticonderoga. In 1920, the garden was designed by the pioneering woman landscape architect, Marian Cruger Coffin, for The Pavilion, the Pell family's estate located in the shadow of Fort Ticonderoga.

Marian Cruger Coffin graduated in 1904 from MIT as one of only two female students studying landscape architecture. After graduation she opened an office in New York City and began a successful career in landscape architecture. She is best known for designing the gardens at Winterthur, the home of the duPont family and now a public museum.                                  

Beginning in 1993, Fort Ticonderoga began work on restoring the King's Garden utilizing Coffin's original design plan. In the restoration, the Fort has used the same plants Coffin chose for the garden in the 1920s. In addition, the museum has restored the brick walls, paths, garden ornaments, and The Young Diana (1937) by the Pells' cousin and famed sculptor, Anna Hyatt Huntington.

While the King's Garden is the centerpiece garden in the Fort's landscape, two recreated gardens open to the public this year. The 18^th-century "garrison garden" contains heirloom vegetables grown at the Fort and at similar 18^th-century military sites. The "Native American garden" utilizes vegetables and techniques common to the Native Americans who were cultivating the peninsula. Together, all three gardens allow the visitor to see and learn about the four centuries of gardening on the Ticonderoga peninsula.

The restoration of the King's Garden was made possible thanks to major donors including the family of Julia C. Beaty, The Ronald Lee Fleming Charitable Trust, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Hatch, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Hill, the Lintilhac Foundation, Inc., the New York State Council on the Arts, Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Pell, Theodore T. Pell, and the Vermont Community Foundation.