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For more on The Mount, see the first post in this series. This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/3pYpKcmp5o4.

Informal gardens

We go through the lime allée  and a terrace with ferociously well-behaved borders …

… to a less formal garden, whose fountain is supported by rocks instead of sculptured fish.

I can agree with this sentiment, set into the pavement in the informal garden. In case you can’t read it from the photo:

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small things.

Edith Wharton

The vistas at The Mount are very well planned. Here, the house as seen from the informal garden.

Back at the formal garden, and then …

… up to the house for the tour inside.

Next week: inside the house.

More

• Back in the summer of 2020, when most museums were still in lockdown or requiring masks, I discovered the pleasures of spending time in elaborate, exquisitely planned gardens. My first excursion was to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, where I visited the Gilded Age mansions of Naumkeag, Ventfort, and The Mount. Ventfort photos are here and here. Naumkeag is in 4 parts, beginning here.
• For more Gilded Mansions and their gardens, click this tag.
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