The Quaint Hideaway of the Freeman Gardens
The Freeman Gardens are a sanctuary within this town. Often forgotten, the mystical hideaway is seemingly a home to fairies, but truly it holds a magical handful of history and culture. It has evolved from once a mysterious, elusive, and locked-away area, to an open, blooming and booming area for events. Although the garden had grown, it was by no miracle. Kevin Sherry, head of the Freeman Gardens, describes it as a “labor of love”, and spends a lot of time working on developments within the garden. These include a new vegetable garden, a potential koi pond, and developing “rooms” within the garden - to mention a few. These rooms are small areas with a thematic link between them all. Not only does the garden give the community its beauty, but over the past year, they have been able to grow and contribute vegetables to the community as well to local food banks.
The property started out in 1800 as stables/farm as a part of a house. They owned several farm animals in the area and the garden was their pasture. After this house was sold to the Freemans, in 1935 infamous landscape architect of the tristate area Ethelbert Furlong, who then designed the garden. This garden consisted of an apple orchard and many more amenities. After the Freemans passed on, their children gave the gardens to the town, when the gardens were then incorporated by the town in 1968.
Sherry discussed how the garden once was reserved, and one couldn’t enter without a caretaker, and how this has changed under his leadership. Now, as we know, the garden is open for everyone to enjoy, and is, as Sherry described, “well-loved” and the town’s response couldn’t be more precise to this description. The gardens feature a collection small items discovered on the property, all preserved in a shed within the gardens, further accentuating the effervescence and “fairy-like” attributes of the area. After the garden had been opened up to the people, and gone through a lot of development and eventually went under Sherry’s care, it has become the lively, bustling, yet quiet and quaint pod of versatility where time stops still an an ever-moving town.
