Ashintully Gardens is a120 acre (0.5 km2) estate inTyringham, Massachusetts that is maintained byThe Trustees of Reservationsland trust. The gardens, and the adjoining594 acres (2.4 km2)McLennan Reservation, were the gift of John Stewart McLennan Jr., and his wife Katharine. The nameAshintully comes fromGaelicEas an Tulaich and means "cascade of the hillock".
The gardens blend several natural features into an ordered arrangement with both formal and informal beauty. These include a rushing stream, native deciduous trees, a roundedknoll, and flanking meadows.
Garden features include the Fountain Pond, Pine Park, Rams Head Terrace, Bowling Green, Regency Bridge, and Trellis Triptych. Urns, columns, and statuary provide ornamentation. Footpaths, bridges, stone stairs, and grassy terraces connect various parts of the garden.
In 1997, Ashintully Gardens received theMassachusetts Horticultural Society's H. Hollis Hunnewell Medal', a prize established to recognize gardens embellished with rare and desirableornamental trees and shrubs.
Ashintully Gardens came about through the efforts of two men: Robb de Peyster Tytus and John S. McLennan Jr.
In the early 20th century,Egyptologist and politicianRobb de Peyster Tytus assembled the estate from the merger of three farms in Tyringham and additional land inOtis. The land holdings of the estate with the three farms grew to almost 1,000 acres (4 km2).
On a hill overlooking the southern end of Tyringham Valley, Tytus built between 1910 - 1912 a white,Georgian-style mansion which came to be known as the Marble Palace. The mansion's main façade featured fourDoric columns and was spanned by thirteen bay windows. Its interior contained thirty-five rooms, ten baths, and fifteen fireplaces. Though the Marble Palace was destroyed by fire in 1952, the front terrace, foundation, and four Doric columns remain today.[1]
In 1913, Tytus died atSaranac Lake, New York, leaving his wife, Grace Henoys Tytus, and two daughters, Mildred and Victoria.
A year after Tytus' death, his widow marriedJohn Stewart McLennan, aCanadian industrialist and newspaper owner, and laterSenator. She gave birth, in 1915, to John Jr., before subsequently being divorced.
John S. McLennan Jr. spent all his childhood summers at the Tytus estate, and acquired the property in 1937, following the death of his mother. He later moved into the farmhouse at the bottom of the hill, and renovated the nearby barn into amusic studio. McLennan was an accomplished composer ofcontemporary classical music, includingchamber andorchestral music and pieces forpiano andorgan. (In 1985 he won anAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters music award.) He designed the elegant gardens as a parallel creative effort to his musical work,.[2] In 1977 John began donating sections of the Ashintully estate to The Trustees of Reservations, although, he continued to live at the estate for the rest of his life.
Shortly before his death, in 1996, John and his wife Katharine donated additional land to the Trustees. The land, including the Marble Palace ruins, the farmhouse, and Ashintully Gardens, was donated with a reserved life estate for Katharine McLennan. Initially, 18 acres (73,000 m2) were reserved for Katharine; she donated 12 acres (49,000 m2) to the Trustees in 2003, retaining 6 acres (24,000 m2) with garden access, upon which her cottage resides.
After her death in 2017, the title for the remaining land was turned over to the Trustees.
The Gardens and John McLennan's life were profiled in a 2007 episode of the GardenStory series,[2] presented byCommunity Idea Stations of Virginia, and broadcast nationally onAmerican Public Television.[3]
Adjoining the Ashintully Gardens are parts of the remnants of the vast 1,000 acres (4 km2) assembled by Robb de Peyster Tytus.
John McLennan Jr. in 1977, in addition to his garden donation to the Trustees, donated446 acres (1.8 km2) of the estate in Otis and Tyringham to establish theMcLennan Reservation. The reservation was expanded in 1978, 1991 and 1995 by a total of148 acres (0.6 km2), bringing the McLennan Reservation to594 acres (2.4 km2).
42°12′55.09″N73°10′38.12″W / 42.2153028°N 73.1772556°W /42.2153028; -73.1772556
