Tour Kathryn Herman’s Connecticut Garden

Landscape designer Kathryn Herman’s own property in Fairfield features a 114-foot-long perennial garden with fourteen individual beds separated by hedging. Photography by Neil Landino

The meadow is a quiet corner of the property formed by grasses. Photograph by Claire Takas.

The perennial garden is visible from the two most-used rooms in the home: the bay window is the living room, and the primary bedroom is located above it. Photograph by Neil Landino.

Inspired by the writings of Beverley Nichols, an English playwright who described a greenhouse as a place to escape the wildness of the outside world, Herman added this one by Alitex in 2015. Photograph by Ngoc Minh Ngo.

The pool garden balances stone, water, and plant life and demonstrates a harmony. Photography by Neil Landino

Herman favors white lace flowers for their umbel-shaped blooms and self-sowing groupings. Photography by Neil Landino.

The story of a garden unfolds season by season. “It’s all of these different moments,” says landscape designer Kathryn Herman. “Things thrive or don’t thrive. You’re always just getting started and at the same time thinking about what’s going to be next.”

Herman first laid plans for her own garden in Fairfield more than two decades ago, a journey she chronicles in her new book, A Moment in Time: Designing a Country Garden (Rizzoli, 2026). Unlike a home, which is designed, then built, and then lived in (with inevitable wear and tear), a garden is devised for change, and time only adds to its magic.

“Gardens are never static,” Herman says. “They are always changing, growing, fading.”

Herman traces her garden’s provenance to the 1920s, when an enterprising young couple, Margaret and Henry Rudkin, purchased 125 acres with the intent of establishing a gentleman’s farm. They named the estate Pepperidge Farm for the large trees found on the property. With both means and foresight, they commissioned architect Walter Bradnee Kirby to design their home and outbuildings and landscape designer Agnes Selkirk Clark to plan the gardens.

In 1937, to help ease her youngest son Mark’s asthma and allergies, Margaret Rudkin began baking her own bread instead of buying the commercial loaves that were exacerbating his symptoms. What began as a holistic remedy soon grew into a thriving business—the Pepperidge Farm bakery we know today (Coincidentally, Mark Rudkin would go on to become a garden designer of international renown.)

When Herman bought the property in 1998, she committed fully to its stewardship. Her gardens honor the Rudkins’ original vision while also informing her professional practice.

“My own garden is my lab where I get to experiment free of the pressure of doing it for anyone else,” she explains. “It is the purest representation of my desires and interests.”

In her spare time, Herman writes, contributing essays to gardening magazines and books. It all comes full circle with A Moment in Time, which paces photography spanning different seasons and several years with Herman’s reflections on form, color, and layering, as well as her enduring affection for umbellifers.

“I’ve always been drawn to plants with a certain air of grace—plants that stand tall but don’t demand attention,” she writes. “The umbellifers teach me that simplicity can hold great power.”