5 min read
Gravel crunches under my feet as I step through the split-rail fence’s wooden gate, flung open as an invitation for visitors to come on in. Beneath the late-afternoon sun, an acre of garden beds arranged in a grid stretches before me. A smile spreads across my face as a pair of pugs comes romping past the fruit tree orchard, scampers across stepping stones lined with trimmed evergreens, and leaps onto a white-framed love seat on the central bosque shaded by Donald Wyman crabapple trees.
I learn this canine duo unofficially (but definitely officially) rules Haroldhurst Farm, an 187-acre property nestled within New York’s bucolic Columbia County. Matthew Malin and Andrew Goetz, founders of skincare brand Malin+Goetz, bought the former dairy farm in 2020 and named it after their fawn pug, Harold, and English garden Sissinghurst. Hidden behind hedgerows and that split-rail fence is Piet’s Garden, the namesake of black pug Piet, whose own moniker honors landscape architect Piet Oudolf. But wait, the landscape reverence continues: Malin and Goetz looked to Mount Vernon’s historic kitchen garden to inspire their own, and planting began in 2024.
Grace Haynes Wall
The Super Chicken Garden within Piet’s Garden at Haroldhurst Farm.
I’m visiting Haroldhurst Farm as part of Trade Secrets, the annual garden and antiques event benefiting Project SAGE, a nonprofit domestic violence agency serving Northwest Connecticut and its surrounding communities in New York and Massachusetts. The weekend hosts garden tours on Saturday along with a rare plants and antiques sale on Sunday. (You’ve probably seen the headlines about Martha Stewart considering this weekend as important as her Christmas party and Easter egg hunt.) The event started in 2001 with Bunny Williams, an overabundance of seedlings in her greenhouse, and an idea to sell them—alongside antiques—and donate the profits to a local women’s shelter. Over 25 years later, the event has expanded from Williams’s front lawn with a few hundred people to Lime Rock Park with a few thousand and is Project SAGE’s largest fundraiser.
One of my favorite projects at VERANDA is producing our annual World’s Most Beautiful Gardens awards, which are judged by Williams and Institute of Classical Architecture & Art president Peter Lyden. Their commentary over the past four years has been like a master class in garden design, and I told them as much at our most recent discussion this past winter. If I really wanted to experience and understand what makes a phenomenal garden, Williams said, I needed to come to Trade Secrets in May. So, I booked my ticket.
Anne Day
Bunny Williams (center) at the 2026 Trade Secrets rare plants and garden antiques sale.
My garden editor antennae flew up as Malin began describing new-to-me companion planting combinations. He points to his strawberry beds, which were decimated by voles in their first year but survived the second after narcissuses were mixed in as natural deterrents. In a nearby border, he’s attempting to save his pest-damaged peach trees by planting alliums beside them. We commiserate over deer, which I learn crave Columbia County’s flowers and produce as much as they do Alabama’s. But Malin and Goetz remain firmly organic in their defense measures. For instance, a ha-ha (or sunken fence created by digging a ditch) behind part of the fence has prevented even the mature bucks from jumping over and into the fruit tree orchard, while a flourishing border of deer-resistant plants mixed in with native shrubs defends the remaining sides. Organic, sustainable practices are essential so Harold and Piet can wander through the garden at their leisure.
Grace Haynes Wall
A border garden in Piet’s Garden at Haroldhurst Farm.
Grace Haynes Wall
In Piet’s Garden, the cutting garden patch looks to the central Donald Wyman bosque sitting area.
I visited two more gardens (one being Williams’s, but more on that later) and spent the day traversing this agrarian corner of southeastern New York and northwestern Connecticut. The region’s pre-Revolutionary history and Colonial Revival architecture captivated me (yes, I did pull over to snap photos of farmhouses), while the pastoral scenery recalled memories of cruising through the Shenandoah Valley during the magical Virginia springs of my college years.
I made Litchfield, the country hamlet where creatives have recently been flocking, my home base for the weekend and checked into The Abner Hotel. The newly opened boutique property occupies the old courthouse, a late-1800s Victorian-inspired stone building anchoring the village green. The contemporary interiors carry on a sense of early American history in their color palettes, like the lounge’s brick-red walls and the bedrooms drenched in ochre. The hospitality also feels delightfully of the past, like the home-cooked breakfast prepared by its in-house chef. The former courtroom is now a tavern-style restaurant (aptly named The Courtroom) serving upscale, locally minded fare, and the Verdict rooftop bar delivers sweeping views of the countryside.
My brain is buzzing with inspiration and ideas from my first (and definitely not last) trip to Trade Secrets. Here, my top five takeaways as a garden editor.
1. The best gardens pull you in for a closer look.
At Haroldhurst Farm, for example, the kitchen garden is meticulously laid out in a grid of rectangular plots, yet the tidiness of the layout is juxtaposed by the wildness of the berries, herbs, vegetables, and flowers growing within them. Williams’s Falls Village, Connecticut, garden offered a different invitation for discovery with a series of pathways—like a mown grassy lane through the crabapple orchard and mulch passage into a shady woodland—that guided visitors through the 15-acre landscape.
2. Sight lines are crucial to the garden’s overall design.
In Williams’s parterre garden, for instance, I could stand on one side with a clear visual connection to the other. And where my eye landed was a focal point (like a statue or sculpture or bench) where my gaze could rest.
Grace Haynes Wall
The woodland garden at Williams’s Connecticut property.
Grace Haynes Wall
A woodland pathway lined with ferns within Williams’s garden.
3. All-green gardens aren’t boring!
It’s all about layering to achieve that visual interest. Williams’s woodland garden was initially unassuming but ended up being my favorite part of the landscape. I held up traffic on these shady footpaths, mouth agape and camera out, admiring the intentional mixture of plants—with different leaf shapes, textures, and heights—stretching beneath the tree canopy. And if you wanted to bring in color for a surprise, like Williams did in one section, lavender wildflowers are a beautiful complement to chartreuse foliage.
4. Bring personality to your outdoor spaces with antiques and curiosities.
Design professionals and enthusiasts alike flocked to Sunday’s grand bazaar of antiques and rare plants to do some serious shopping. My wish list included a handwoven willow sculpture from The Till, an antique French wrought iron chaise, clay strawberry pots, crumbly stone sculptures of woodland creatures, an 1800s Chinese urn, an architectural birdhouse modeled after a garden folly—I could go on. Collected artifacts arranged among plants are what make a garden distinctly yours.
5. Gardeners are the happiest people.
Maybe it’s because they’re too busy with their hands in the dirt to doomscroll. My Oura ring’s stress level remained at “Relaxed” throughout the weekend (and that’s saying something for someone whose baseline is “Engaged.”) As I turned back for one last look at Piet’s Garden, the sun was starting to descend behind the tree line. Malin, Goetz, and the pugs were sitting on the bosque surrounded by their harvest, laughing with the last few visitors on the tour. It’s a scene AI could never replicate, this simple connection between community and nature. And perhaps sharing joy with our neighbors starts with a kitchen garden. (Williams has one, too, and can surely attest.) My backyard is ready.
Grace Haynes Wall is the Senior Home & Garden Editor for VERANDA, where she manages the brand’s home and garden coverage. She also writes and edits stories across print and digital platforms, ranging in topics from design and decorative arts to flower arranging, entertaining, travel, and more. Additionally, she leads the World’s Most Beautiful Shops and World’s Most Beautiful Gardens franchises. Prior to joining VERANDA, Grace built her background in home and garden content as an editor at Southern Living. She most enjoys reading and sharing stories that bring interiors and landscapes to life.
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