The Inaugural Bunny Mellon Curricula Garden Symposium: Inside Out - Relating House to Garden

The ICAA is pleased to host the inaugural Bunny Mellon Curricula Garden Symposium, entitled Inside Out - Relating House to Garden, which will be held at Wethersfield on October 24, 2021. During this special one-day event, award-winning garden designer and author Page Dickey and renowned interior designer Katie Ridder will host an exclusive group for a full day of programming at Wethersfield, the 1,000-acre property of philanthropist Chauncey Devereaux Stillman, one of the last of the Country Place Era estates. This Symposium will serve as an educational lecture and site for emerging professionals and enthusiasts to learn about this historic property and the architecture and landscape that defines it.The Symposium will include a tour of Wethersfield’s Main House and formal garden, a compelling conversation about integration of home and landscape, a special presentation by Page and Katie on the other’s own home and garden, as well as a lunch at the Millbrook home of Kirk Henckels and Fernanda Kellogg, along with tours of other local private homes and gardens. Though this event is exclusive to Bunny Mellon Curricula sponsors, Laurel Society members, and the ICAA's emerging professionals, the day's activities will be filmed and the lecture will be shared with the general public on classicist.org and in the Classicism at Home newsletter.

Katie Ridder: Katie has been a member of the Garden Conservancy Society of Fellows since 2015 and has shared her garden with the public through the Garden Conservancy Open Days program. She was elected to the board of directors of the Garden Conservancy in September 2018.

An interior designer with offices in New York City, Katie was an enthusiastic weekend gardener at her house in Bronxville for more than twenty years. At her country house in Millbrook, NY, she has a formal perennial garden with greenhouse, a cutting garden, and a woodland garden. She co-authored a book, A House in the Country (Vendome, 2016), with her husband, architect Peter Pennoyer, chronicling their collaboration on their house and garden in Millbrook. Katie also serves on the Friends of Horticulture at Wave Hill. At the New York Botanical Garden, she is a Member of the Corporation and serves on the Horticulture Committee.

Katie's work has been published in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, House Beautiful, Town & Country, and The New York Times and is the subject of the monograph Katie Ridder Rooms (Vendome, 2011) and Katie Ridder Rooms Encore (Vendome, 2020).

Page Dickey: Page has been gardening passionately since her early twenties, and writing about gardening, as well as designing gardens for others, for the last three decades. She has written eight books and edited another. Most of her books concentrate on aspects of garden design such as creating gardens that reflect their settings (Gardens in the Spirit of Place and Breaking Ground) or planning gardens as extensions of our homes (Inside Out), in each case illustrated by exceptional examples around America. Duck Hill Journal and Embroidered Ground are about Duck Hill where she lived for thirty-four years, about the process of making the garden there, and her thoughts on gardening in general. Page was the editor of the book Outstanding American Gardens, celebrating 25 years of the Garden Conservancy with photographs by Marion Brenner. Her new book, Uprooted: A Gardener Reflects on Beginning Again, describes leaving a beloved garden of thirty-four years, finding a home in the northwest corner of Connecticut, and falling in love with its land.

Page lectures around the country about plants and garden design, and has written many articles for magazines over the years, including House and Garden, House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Horticulture, Elle Décor, Garden Design, and The New York Times. The garden at Duck Hill has been featured in a variety of periodicals including The New York Times, House and Garden, Elle Décor, Vogue, and Garden Design.

She serves on the Board of the Garden Conservancy and is one of the two founders of its Open Days Program. She also serves on the Boards of Stonecrop Garden in Cold Spring, NY, Hollister House Garden in Washington, CT, and The Little Guild in Cornwall, CT. She and her husband are both members of the Friends of Horticulture at Wave Hill. Page was recently elected as an Honorary Member of The Garden Club of America. In 2015, Page and her husband Bosco Schell moved to Falls Village, Connecticut, to an old church with 17 acres of fields and woods and a view of the Berkshire foothills. They are off on a new gardening adventure.

Sponsors

Presented as part of the Bunny Mellon Curricula at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. The ICAA is very grateful to the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation for its generous support of this program, along with the Curricula's Lead Co-Sponsor Hollander Design Landscape Architects, Film Series Co-Sponsor Janice Parker Landscape Architects, Landscape Prize Co-Sponsor Harrison Design, Continuing Education and Public Programs Co-Sponsor Charlotte Moss, and Garden Symposium Co-Sponsor Kathryn M. and Ronald J. Herman Charitable Foundation.

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