Spring’s promise feels more grand this year. There is a hint that we are nearing the final chapter in this year of years, and that Hope is almost within reach. To welcome in the first day of Spring, here is a respite of visual reverie by the Master of Beauty, self-taught gardener and artist in her own right, Bunny Mellon. I witnessed her landmark auction at Sotheby’s in 2014 and was captivated by her beautifully cultivated and very private world which I shared in a post.
Spring was mostly forgotten last year as the virus had us all in its hold. As more and more of us are getting closer to our shot in the arm, here is a dose of Bunny’s Beauty, from her meticulously created gardens and homes, to help herald in a new day. Spring’s promise. Cheers!
Bunny Mellon’s crab apple allée. Photograph by Roger Foley, Oak Spring Garden Foundation website.
Hand-painted trompe l’oeil scenes by French artist Fernand Renard frame glass panel windows and doors and grace storage cabinets in Bunny Mellon’s potting shed on her Virginia estate, now Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, VA. Photograph by Michael Dunne in this article from Architectural Digest.
A corner of Bunny Mellon’s potting shed and trompe l’oeil detail. Photograph by Michael Dunne in this article from Architectural Digest.
Bunny Mellon’s potting shed and storage cabinet and work shelf trompe l’oeil panels. Photograph by Roger Foley, Vendome Press, as found here.
Photo, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, as referenced in this Washington Post book review of Paul and Bunny Mellon: Visual Biographies (book seen below).
Bunny Mellon’s potting shed. Photograph by Michael Dunne in this article from Architectural Digest.
Bunny Mellon’s trompe l’oeil-paneled potting shed pavilion. Photograph by Matt Roth in an illuminating article about the garden’s living legacy by Adrian Higgins in The Washington Post Magazine, June 17, 2019.
Interior design firm Leonard and Strom latticed the vestibule to the Mellon Manhattan residence. Photograph by Michael Dunne in this article from Architectural Digest.
Oak Spring Garden, the crab apple allée. Photograph by Michael Dunne in this article from Architectural Digest.
Rarely seen image of the exterior profile of the greenhouse’s potting shed, and the crab apple allée connecting the greenhouse with the formal garden. AND! I spy the finial atop the greenhouse which I referenced in a post in mid-December, designed by French jewelry designer Jean Schlumberger.
Terrace, Mellon Antigua residence. Photograph by Michael Dunne in this article from Architectural Digest.
The Spring-like palette at the Mellon Antigua residence. Photograph by Michael Dunne in this article from Architectural Digest.
Bunny Mellon’s iconic Swedish-inspired hand-painted floors in her Antigua home, painted by decorative painter Paul Leonard. Photograph by Michael Dunne in this article from Architectural Digest.
This video tour of the greenhouse complex at Oak Spring Garden Foundation got this whole post going, it’s worth the 3:07.
Photograph from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation Instagram page.
From April 2020, Paul and Bunny Mellon: Visual Biographies, Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi with Tony Willis, a new book chronicling the rarely seen trompe l’oeil scenes at Oak Spring, Virginia.
A few cuttings from my little borrowed plot downstairs. Photo taken by moi during lockdown last April. Must have been channeling my inner Bunny endeavors.
Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon, by Linda Jane Holden, Thomas Lloyd and Bryan Huffman, Gibbs Smith, June 2020.
The Gardens of Bunny Mellon by Linda Holden, Photographs by Roger Foley, Vendome Press.
Bunny Mellon The Life of an American Style Legend by Meryl Gordon, Grand Central Publishing.
Last three photographs by Beth Horta for Sweet Sabelle taken outside of Oak Spring Garden Foundation.