Lossing Manor

The story of the garden at Lossing Manor is one of rescue, along with its house. A prosperous farm when it was the home of prominent Victorian historian Benson Lossing, the property suffered a long subsequent decline, the lot of too many among upstate New York's treasure trove of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses. Before redemption, the garden had languished as a rural equipment dump. Hedges and boxwoods form symmetrical axes that follow the unusual geometry of the 1806 house, observing Russell Page's dictum that the straight line is a natural complement to plant forms. Within those borders, North American native flowers predominate. Species continue to change, adapting to unusual shifts in weather conditions and the challenge of gardening in the region's heavy clay soils.