Fort Stamford's Secret Garden

On a warm spring afternoon, a few picnicking families sit at the tables out by Westover Road. Set back from the road, however, is a peaceful spot, lovingly mulched and just waiting to burst with its summer colors. Only a bag of chocolate ice cream, melted on the cement picnic table, remains as a sign that anyone has been inside the Goodbody Garden other than the devoted team of gardeners and a few hungry deer.

Once the home of Marcus Goodbody and his family, the city of Stamford acquired the property in 1972 and in 1975, then-Mayor Julius Wilensky came to the Stamford Garden Club and asked them to take on the responsibility of reconstructing and caring for the garden.

“We’re here at least twice a month from March through November, often more,” Marjorie Bernstein told Patch. “Like any garden, there’s always something to be done.”

Bernstein and her co-chairs Rosemary Mygatt and Sharon Slocum, a landscape designer whose gifts have clearly served the garden well, work together to plan out the garden and take ideas from the rest of the Garden Club beginning in January of each year. With over thirty years experience working in the space, they’re still experimenting with new additions and improvements every year.

“In the summer it’s just beautiful, the alliums are just about to pop now. It’s an all-season garden really,” Bernstein said. “People can come enjoy it from the spring through the fall. We put it to bed sometime in November.”

Over 30 gardeners spend approximately 280 volunteer hours in the garden during the season and the results are nothing short of breathtaking. From the front garden beds neatly maintained and blooming, to the interior, recently pruned and starting to come alive with spring flowers. Magnolias and crab apple trees bloom overhead.

The majority of the garden is filled with perennials, but the group will be filling in spaces with annuals in the coming weeks. The space is divided into flowerbeds and each is assigned a “bed head," a Garden Club member responsible for that section.

“Other days we just do what needs to be done,” Bernstein said.

Many of the structures from Marcus Goodbody’s garden are still intact. The perimeter is marked with stone walls and entry columns. A stone pergola stretches along the back. One of the more unorthodox reminders of the Goodbody family is a memorial to their cat, Ginger, “as faithful a cat as ever lived”, who died in 1933 and was buried in the garden.

The city provides $1500 each year to help the Garden Club maintain the garden and members of the Club who do not work in the garden instead contribute $50 to help maintain the space. Other funds come from the Club's budget and generous donors.

“This was a fort, a real fort in the 1700s, the river is down there, so it was meant to be a look-out,” Bernstein explained.

Today, the garden at Fort Stamford remains a sort of secret garden, hidden away just off Westover Road and waiting to be discovered.

“I do know people who enjoy it — I’ll tell someone about it and they’ll say that they walk there. It’s nice to know that it is being used,” Bernstein said. “It’s very peaceful…I think it’s a very special place.”

The Stamford Garden Club encourages people to come visit the garden throughout the growing season to enjoy its beauty and delight in this little piece of history (just please, clean up after any ice cream).