Explore Innisfree Garden, an iconic 185-acre public garden in New York’s Hudson Valley, and the timeless design ideas and timely landscape management techniques—aligned with but arguably still ahead of today’s cutting-edge horticulture—that have been successfully used here for more than half a century.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places for exceptional national significance, Innisfree is the life’s work of modernist landscape architect Lester Collins (1914-1993). In 1960, he opened a former private estate as a public garden. Saddled with that estate’s substantial debt, the only abundant resources were this polymath’s intellectual capital, the site itself, and time. Collins spent more than three decades developing design and maintenance strategies that dramatically save labor and capital by creating just enough to be truly memorable and actively partnering with natural processes in an innovative, design-forward way. These widely applicable methods yield resilient, biodiverse, and widely engaging greenspaces. Innisfree is recognized as a world-class garden and singular work of art, but Lester Collins’ greatest legacy may prove to be this remarkable approach to placemaking that is as poetic as it is pragmatic.
As landscape curator at Innisfree, Katherine Kerin has been involved with all aspects the garden’s care, from hands-on horticulture to fundraising. She wrote Innisfree’s award-winning National Register listing, developed its diverse public programming, and is leading the major preservation planning effort now underway. She has a master’s in landscape architecture from Cornell, a B.A. from Wellesley, and completed the Stonecrop Gardens Internship. Some HAH members may know Kate from her time with Garden Conservancy Open Days, where she created the Digging Deeper series. She serves on boards and committees for various nonprofits, and occasionally still designs gardens.
