Bessie had been raised with a love for horticulture, and, along with her distant relative and dear friend Estelle Clements, who moved in to help run the estate after Augustus’s sudden death, she passed that appreciation on to her daughters, Marjorie and Augustine. It is important to note contributions of landscape architect John DeWolf, whom they hired early on to lay out the grounds, but much of the heartfelt work put into Blithewold’s gardens over time was orchestrated by this group of fine women. Marjorie, in particular, had a profoundly lasting influence—living here for eight decades and bequeathing the land to a trust upon her passing.
