Page 20 - The Hunt - Summer 2023

HOME & GARDEN
CELEBRATIONS
Fior years, the grounds of at least
one Chateau Country estate took
a long summer slumber. It was
once the season when the owners packed their bags for a season-long break in
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where they’d often welcome relatives from Delaware.
When the grandchildren got a bit older, they gravitated toward their own social
circle in the Brandywine Valley. If their grandparents wanted to spend time with them, they’d have to come up with something enticing. They opted for a swimming pool,
which is now the glorious centerpiece of a family-friendly outdoor-entertaining mecca. To come up with a plan that worked with
the existing landscape, the couple turned to Wallace Landscape Associates’ Richard Lyon, who’s been designing and maintaining
spring and fall tableaus on the 30-acre
estate in Greenville for more than 10 years. “They’d never spent summers there before and wanted to make it special—a place where the grandchildren could come,” he says.
Lyon hails from New Zealand and has experienced stunning topography around
the globe. He places northern Delaware’s Chateau Country at the top of his list of favorites. “It’s the most picturesque rural landscape in the world—rolling hills, sparkling streams, covered bridges and beautiful houses,” he says. “It’s a privilege to be invited into these very special properties.”
Chateau Country owes its lovely vistas to the Piedmont, that fertile crescent of land that covers a base of crystalline metamorphic and igneous rock formed 540 million years ago. The results are the rushing waters
that powered 19th-century mills along the
18 THE HUNT MAGAZINE summer 2023
By Eileen Smith Dallabrida
Water Works
Summer returns to an estate in Chateau Country.