Take a Tour of Martha's Most Beautiful Gardens—and Learn How She Created Each One

Turkey Hill: Westport, Connecticut

As a young mom in 1971, Martha moved with her family to Westport, Connecticut, where she embarked on the ultimate DIY project: fixing up a 1805 farmhouse and creating an unforgettable landscape. She started Turkey Hiwith two acres and gradually expanded to six as adjacent properties came up for sale. Those years spent planting and tending perennial borders, orchards, herbs, and a potager gave her what she calls a "college education" in gardening. "I would not be who I am today without the vast knowledge I gained there, on that small bit of paradise," she wrote when she sold the property in 2007.

"My advice to new gardeners is to go to nurseries and find something you love, and just start digging and planting," Martha says. "You're bound to make mistakes—I make lots—but you'll learn from them, and you can always dig up a plant and try again."

Turkey Hill: Colorful Blooms

As she expanded the gardens at Turkey Hill, Martha leaned into creating a colorful palette. "I never thought I would love so much color," Martha says. "But seeing Monet's garden at Giverny in all its glory blew my mind." She planted an exuberant sea of blooms at Turkey Hill that unfurled from April through October. Here, clusters of tulips and daffodils blend with sweet pink bleeding hearts that jubilantly trumpet spring.

Mixing lots of different hues is challenging—shades can clash and overwhelm. One of Martha's secrets is to stick with tried-and-true varieties. "There are certain old plants that you can't get wrong combining, like purple Higo and Siberian irises, orangey-red and pink Oriental poppies, and columbines," she says. "Put them together, and you have a magnificent tableau that you couldn't get with other plants."

Turkey Hill: Vining Plants

Martha is a fan of vining plants—specifically clematis. "The fragrance of pink Clematis montana var. rubens is one of the best smells ever," she says. "I planted it so the vines would cover my kitchen pergola."

Turkey Hill: Pool Wisteria

A narrow path led from the house to the pool, which was framed by a stone wall and perennial borders. A wisteria tree marked the entrance.

Lily Pond: East Hampton, New York

Martha considers her former beach retreat in East Hampton, New York—which she purchased in 1990 and sold a few years ago—a revelation. "Everything grew so easily! It was such a joy to garden there," she says. Amazed at the way plants flourished in the rich, silty loam and mild coastal climate, she filled her yard at Lily Pond with a riot of roses, including heirlooms, climbers, and English varieties. Before she sold the property, she transplanted them to her current estate in Bedford, New York, giving her grandchildren a thorn-free space in which to play outside the house.

Lily Pond: Foliage Galore

After Hurricane Sandy destroyed trees and plants in the sideyard, Martha decided to rethink this stretch. Keeping the palette tight, she layered the beds on either side with varieties of cut-leaved Japanese maples, such as Acer palmatum var. dissectum "Red Dragon," and a mix of perennials, from feathery ferns to large-leaved hostas. With the exception of a few blooms, like lush stands of white hydrangeas, foliage reigns over flowers. "It's now a beautiful contemplative garden," she says.

Lily Pond: Gravel Path

The gravel path in the shady side garden leads to an elegant latticed gate, which opens to the property's backyard and pool.

Lily Pond: Container Plants

A large strawberry pot (with pockets on the sides) filled with giant alocasia, purple scaevola, chartreuse creeping Jenny, and trailing silver dichondra sits by the pool.

Lily Pond: Moss-Covered Walkway

This mossy brick walkway runs behind the pool and is flanked by tall hornbeam hedges, low-growing ferns, and bright hostas.

Bedford: Bedford, New York

When Martha bought this 153-acre property in 2000, she found herself in vast, empty fields with only a small smattering of trees—"a blank canvas," she says. Today, Bedford is bursting with flora and fauna. She's planted a dramatic boxwood allée, thousands of trees (including a fruit orchard), prolific plots of vegetables, flowers, and shade plants. She also fenced off paddocks for her horses and donkeys, added greenhouses, and built a pool.

"My father taught me that you can do it all from scratch, starting from seeds or cuttings, and if you nurture them, they will produce," Martha says. "I still do this: I grow trees from saplings and boxwood from rooted cuttings, and pretty much all my flowers are from seeds sown in the greenhouse. I enjoy seeing them develop. I think a gardener learns more this way."

Bedford: Daffodils Galore

Martha's farm is always evolving, she says. Storms take down trees, turning a shady spot into a sunny one. Overly vigorous plants get pulled and alter the look of a border, pests force plots to move, and new interests ignite a flurry of plantings. And that's the thrill of gardening: You are constantly learning and adapting.

To create this swath of daffodils, Martha mapped out waves of cultivars, plotting about 100 bulbs in each group. Every spring, the flowers explode in drifts of yellow and white, multiplying each year.

Bedford: Border Garden

Before it became unwieldy and took over her pergola border, purple nepeta grew beautifully on Martha's property. It's since been replaced with more alliums, Camassia, and grape hyacinth, and she's edged the front with small boxwood shrubs she raised from cuttings.

Bedford: Dappled Shade

Two weeping katsura trees provide dappled shade for white alliums, clematis, and peonies.

Bedford: Autumn Colors

In fall, the farm is ablaze in gold and red foliage.

Bedford: A Variety of Plants

Every January, Martha dives into a stack of seed and plant catalogs to find unusual cultivars and species to grow next. "For me, gardening is all about scent, color, and variety, variety, and more variety," she says. Instead of ordering just one type of baptisia, for instance, she'll choose several to try out new colors and test cultivars to see how they fare. In her flower garden—which is inspired by Turkey Hill's—she fills the beds with multiple kinds of roses, irises, dianthus, phlox, columbines, and self-seeding poppies, which have the "nicest way of popping up in unexpected places," she says.

Bedford: Potted Begonias

One side of Martha's greenhouse is devoted to all kinds of begonias—tuberous, rex, semperflorens, fibrous, and her favorite, rhizomatous.

Bedford: Boxwood Allée

A 650-foot allée of undulating boxwood lines the path to the stables. She prunes the shrubs every autumn to keep them comely.

Bedford: Winter Care

At the start of winter, Martha's gardeners shroud her boxwoods in burlap to protect them from strong winds and heavy snow.

Skylands: Mount Desert Island, Maine

In 1997, Martha purchased her summer home on Mount Desert Island in Maine. "This is the only place I ever bought that had an established garden," she says. Designed in the 1920s by Danish-born landscape architect Jens Jensen for Edsel and Eleanor Ford, the property is filled with fir and spruce trees towering over carpets of moss, stone pools, meandering paths, and mile-long driveways that vanish into the scenery. Martha takes her responsibility as a steward of this American treasure seriously: "I revel in the fact that I have a landscape designed by someone of such importance, who in my mind made absolutely no mistakes whatsoever," she says.

Martha spends several weeks each summer at Skylands with her family and plenty of friends. "I love to water the plants in the early morning, or walk around and just take it all in," she says.

Skylands: Potting Overwintered Plants

Every year at the end of May, Martha heads north with a truck loaded with trays of small succulents and large agaves, aloes, and palms that she has propagated and overwintered in her Bedford greenhouses. She and a group of green-thumbed friends make a weekend of it, potting Martha's containers on the "cracked ice" terrace.

Skylands: Circular Driveway

The circular driveway at the entrance of the house encircles an abundance of greenery in various hues, heights, and textures.

Skylands: Statement Plants

A detail of a granite trough planted with echeveria and senecio.

Skylands: Scenic Views

When the sky is clear, Martha can see Seal Harbor from the terraces of the house, which was designed by New York architect Duncan Candler.

Skylands: Lillies and Sphynx "Guards"

Lilies fill Martha's large terrace, which she says is "guarded" by two glazed terra-cotta sphinxes designed by Émile Muller in the 19th century. "The two are stored indoors and taken out as soon as the warmer weather arrives," she says.

Skylands: White-Pine Needles

Martha covers the paths in white-pine needles every spring (a local tradition). The coppery color complements the bright-green moss.

Skylands: Cutting Garden

Martha uses the walled cutting garden to grow vegetables for fresh summer meals, as well as flowers like dahlias, snap-dragons, and lilies for arrangements.

Skylands: Sculptural Design

La Rivière, a bronze sculpture by French artist Aristide Maillol, rests below the stone terrace in a bed of ferns, moss, and other lush ground covers.