Ladew Topiary Gardens: The Foxhunter's Eden

The estate you're passing was transformed by one of the most eccentric garden makers in American history. A modest farmhouse here was built in stages beginning in the late seventeen hundreds. Then in nineteen twenty-nine, Harvey Smith Ladew, a wealthy Maryland foxhunter and bon vivant, bought Pleasant Valley Farm and began reshaping the grounds into something no one else in America had attempted at the same scale.

Ladew sculpted twenty-two acres of topiary gardens, trimming yew and boxwood into foxhunts frozen in mid-chase, swans, horses, and even a giraffe. He taught himself the craft largely by observation during travels in England. The Garden Club of America later called it the most outstanding topiary garden in America.

Ladew kept hunting foxes and hosting artists and writers here until his death in nineteen seventy-six.