Enclosed Gardens
The Box Walk
To accommodate the forty-foot drop in elevation from the Urn Terrace to the Ellipse, Farrand designed a sequence of steps to interrupt the hill's steep slope. The path was laid in grass with stone risers, but at some point before 1957, it was paved in bricks with a pattern of diamonds and ellipses that Mildred Bliss had seen at Barrington Court in Somerset, England.
Box Walk is lined with the English boxwood, Buxus sempervirens 'Suffruticosa', plucked annually to preserve the "rumpled mass" that Farrand preferred. Where the Box Walk leads into the Ellipse, two stone pineapples, purchased in 1958, flank the path.
Further Information
The South Front
- South Side of the House
- South Lawn
- The Garden Library and Ribbon Walk
- East Lawn
- R Street Walk
- The Terrior Column and Enclosure
Enclosed Gardens
- The Orangery
- The Green Garden
- The Star Garden
- The North Vista
- The Swimming Pool and Loggia
- The Pebble Garden
- The Beech Terrace
- The Urn Terrace
- The Rose Garden
- The Fountain Terrace
- The Arbor Terrace
- The Box Walk
- The Ellipse