Breaking Ground

Inspired by eighteenth-century military gardens, Sarah G. T. Pell established the first ornamental garden on this site as the fort was being reconstructed. In 1912, Alfred Bossom, who designed the reconstruction, enclosed the flower garden with a rustic wall, using flawed bricks and randomly incorporating stones to create the impression of a romantic, antique structure. The space within these walls became known as the King's Garden, a reference to the jardin du Roi planted by the French defenders of Carillon. Around 1920, Sarah hired Marian Cruger Coffin to design a new garden plan. Coffin, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the first practicing female landscape architects in the United States, created a carefully planned garden that became a quiet retreat for the Pell family away from the activity of the reconstructed fort and also a place of entertainment for distinguished visitors and guests. Guided tours of the garden were offered to the public for the first time in 1967. In the late 1990s, the garden was restored to follow Coffin's original plan from the 1920s, and the restored King's Garden opened daily to the public for the first time in 2001. Today the garden is maintained according to Coffin's design, a living reminder of another era of Ticonderoga's history.

Ticonderoga, New York · United States