Sinkler Garden Restoration Underway |
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Funds raised by The Highlands' annual Craft Show support the Sinkler Garden Restoration. We hope you'll take a moment to look around the garden during your visit to The Highlands. As you stand at the center of the garden (near the fountain) with your back to the mansion house, you will see the screening wall with its new plants of Boston Ivy, Wisteria, Arborvitae and Magnolia and new (2005) statues of Summer, Autumn, Winter and urns. Further to the right is Bacchus, watching from afar. More About the Sinkler Garden RestorationFollowing is an excerpt from the report given to The Highlands Historical Society by Doell & Doell, the garden historians and landscape planners who completed the research and plans for restoration of the Sinkler Garden.
Without question, this spacious walled garden is a nationally significant historic landscape that is worthy of preservation. In its day, Miss Sinkler's garden exemplified design principles and stewardship principles that were common many estates during the "Country Place era" in American landscape architecture. The garden's association with two prominent American designers of the period - architect Wilson Eyre, and interior designer Henry Davis Sleeper - also heightened its stature in the nation...this enchanted, theatrical setting was tailor-made to suit the unique personality, avantgarde taste and refined lifestyle of their friend and client, Miss Sinkler.Over the past six decades, however, many of the garden's character-defining features have been lost or degraded...Fortunately, site and archival research have revealed that there is ample documentation - in the form of historic plans, photographs, aerial views and descriptive accounts - to accurately restore the detail, form and character of Miss Sinkler's garden with only a limited degree of conjecture. To the degree possible, the restoration program highlights the years that immediately precede and follow Miss Sinkler's receipt of a special achievement award (1933) from the prestigious Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. As our efforts to restore the Sinkler Garden continue, The Highlands Historical Society plans to raise the funs needed for the project through the Craft Show and other events. If you have any questions or comments about the plans for the Sinkler Garden restoration, Please contact The Highlands Historical Society Executive Director, Meg Bleecker Blades at (215) 641-2687 
Sinkler Garden Notes (Glossary and timeline of the landscape)Parterre Garden - a flower garden having the beds and paths arranged to form a pattern. The Armillary Sphere in the parterre garden is original to the garden. Armillary spheres are a miniature representation of the earth and were used for centuries to study the sky and the celestial coordinate system. Excedra - the pink rounded wall is called an excedra which in Greek means "place to sit" or in Latin "outdoor seat." Building Dates If you are standing at the fountain in the center looking at the mansion, you are facing North.
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