Moonlight Garden

Moonlight Garden. . The Moonlight Garden was the last and smallest of three garden rooms that landscape architect John Handrahan designed and built for Mary Clark Thompson, probably in 1916. Located near the mansion, it was surrounded by an oval-shaped hedge. His plans showed that the Moonlight Garden had a single entrance from which a triangular turf path led to a bench and covered seat. A bed was planted on each side of the path, and one was located at the garden’s center. The flowers in this romantic garden were primarily white and night-blooming, filing the darkness with a tantalizing fragrance. , Historical photographs of this garden have never been located. In fact, this garden had completely vanished until John Handrahan and Ernest W. Bowditch’s plan of the Moonlight Garden from “portion of Sonnenberg, 1917,” was found in 1984. Restoration of the garden using this plan began the following year. , The garden’s original turf path was replaced by stepping stones during the 1985 restoration, and in 2006, its perennials were replanted. The garden’s original benches are still in place. , “dressed mostly in white and the air was heavy with the sweet aromas of heliotrope, tuberoses, and verbenas and filled with bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.” , This description of the moonlight Garden comes from Mary K. McKechnie’s unpublished 1953 essay, “Sonnenberg: The Golden Era” and was used as a guide for the garden’s replanting. McKechnie was Mary Clark Thompson’s niece.