Rocky Hills’ creator honored by Westchester County as “Best Green Friend”

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April 16, 2010
by Christine Yeres

On Wednesday evening Henriette Suhr was honored by the Friends of Westchester County Parks as “Best Green Friend.” To an audience of about 200 at the Glen Island Harbour Club in New Rochelle, which included County Executive Rob Astorino as well as former Executive Andy Spano, Suhr described herself as having spent her first fifty years indoors, making a career of interior decorating, and the second not-quite fifty years outdoors, at Rocky Hills.

During that time Suhr gradually made over Rocky Hills, the rugged 13-acre Mt. Kisco property she shared with her art conservator husband, William Suhr, into a vast and varied series of gardens.  She will bequeath Rocky Hills to Westchester County to be used as a public strolling garden and center for the study of horticulture.

Suhr rose to accept her award and spoke briefly about Rocky Hills.  She finds herself apologizing these days for the delay of the customary opening of the garden, set now for Saturday, May 29.  Rocky Hills was badly ravaged this past winter, which sharply brought home to her, she testified somberly, the difference between the control she was able to impose on interiors and her lack of it when it came to the heavy blanket of wet snow that bent and broke trees, shrubs and a wisteria pergola early in March. 

Suhr, her horticulturist Timothy Tilghman and a steady stream of devoted volunteers have worked non-stop since then to repair the gardens, famous in May for the blue sea of forget-me-nots that is allowed to flow everywhere among azaleas, ferns, Japanese primroses and magnolias. 

From her copy of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Suhr read E.B. White’s epigraph: “I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively instead of skeptically and dictatorially.” 

For information about the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program, and to learn more about Rocky Hills (Open Day: Saturday, May 29), click HERE. 
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The Friends of Rocky Hills Lecture Series continues next Thursday, April 22, with “Non-stop Plants: A Garden for 365 Days,” a presentation by garden editor, writer and blogger Margaret Roach at the Chappaqua Library at 7:30 p.m.