The Sundial and Fountain Gardens
John Jay Homestead
The gardens at the Homestead pay homage to John Jay’s love of nature and to the pleasure that the Jay family found on the grounds surrounding their home.
This garden combines designs found in family gardens from the early 19th through the 2oth centuries.
The Bedford Garden Club and staff from the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation began developing this garden in 1969. The garden, completed in 1983, is a community project, maintained by the Bedford Garden Club.
“Cousin Ann says she is much better lately which she attributes to the garden – you know her fondness for it – how carefully she watches and nurses every expanding bed and how much she appears herself to benefit as they increase in fragrance and beauty.”
(in this excerpt from a letter written on April 6, 1808, by Susan Livingston Ridley, we learn that Susan’s cousin Ann Jay shared her father John’s enthusiasm for horticulture.)
Marker can be reached from Jay Street (New York Route 22) 0.1 miles south of Beaver Dam Road, on the left when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
