Fairfield, CT - In 1974, The Fairfield Garden Club, member club of The Garden Club of America, answered the Fairfield Historical Society’s call to provide an appropriate garden setting for the 18th century Ogden House that the Historical Society had just acquired. The Garden Club commissioned Anne Leighton, an authority on American gardens, to design an early 18th century style garden for the house, and Club members committed to maintaining the newly installed beds.
Those Garden Club members from the 1970s would be amazed to see the extraordinary Ogden House grounds today, 45 years later, that feature a beautiful Colonial Dooryard herb Garden, a thriving bee colony and a scenic riparian border along Brown’s Brook. Those early Ogden gardeners would perhaps be most impressed to see how the Ogden House gardens have become such an essential teaching tool for our community—visited by hundreds of school children each year to learn the history of medicinal herb, teaching adults the value of conservation and celebrating three centuries of our human adaptation of Fairfield’s landscape.