Tours Sunday to Benefit Garden Conservancy

Pelham homeowners have the opportunity Sunday to get some gardening ideas and benefit the Garden Conservancy.

Two area locations—one a park and one a private home—will be on display.

Gardens in southern Westchester County that will be on display are the Persian-inspired gardens at Untermyer Park in Yonkers and the gardens at Louise Edeiken and Eliot Goldfinger's ranch-style house in New Rochelle.

The Edeiken-Goldfinger garden will be on display from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 30, as part of the Garden Conservancy's Open Days Program, a benefit for the conservation organization. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the home—37 Rolling Way—the day of the event.

Besides the gardens in their front and back yards, one Edeiken-Goldfinger garden is set in the rock cut of the former New York Westchester & Boston railway which is also part of their property. It was transformed into a garden complete with stone walls and walkways made out of fieldstone, bluestone, gravel or slate.

"Our garden was recommended," Edeiken, a singer and actress, said, as she and her husband led a visitor through the grounds.

"Eliot and I have different approaches to our gardens," she said.

They moved into the New Rochelle house in 1992. Edeiken said she started getting interested in gardening when she volunteered at the New York Botanic Gardens.

"I started growing vegetables from sees at the old greenhouse," she said, which is no longer in use at Hudson Park.

Edeiken said she started out with things she like, through texture, color and continuous bloom.

"Then Eliot started gardening," she said, calling his approach "a planned messiness."

Goldfinger, a sculptor by trade, said he uses form and nature to create his gardens, collecting boulders from cemeteries for accents, as well as rocks to fashion fences and steps. 

He thinks pruning is similar to sculpture and will, for example, trim the lower part of plant to allow a contrasting one to live underneath it.

"It's crucial for plants to match the environment," he said, adding he will move a plant if it doesn't seem to be thriving in what was thought to be the ideal location.

Edeiken said gardens are living pieces of art.

"Your neighbor could have the same plant and be totally different on their property," she said. "There is an element of surprise."

Both Edeiken and Goldfinger were particularly pleased when youngest son Evan Goldfinger, 17 and a 2013 New Rochelle High School graduate, decided to help out in the garden by laying stone walks and walls and tending to the plants.

"It's become a family affair," Edeiken said.