Situated at the end of the Grand Staircase, the Trimbles discovered a small space, situated under a live oak with a flight of steps leading now to nowhere – this became the Music Room. Please pause here to absorb this setting.
When the Trimbles acquired Afton Villa Garden’s 250 acres in 1972, including 30 acres of open gardens and grounds, they adopted a defining philosophy – certain principles as guidelines to govern the preservation or conservation of a nineteenth century garden. The Trimbles resolved to restore the spirit of the original garden, and to protect it as well.
Early on they recognized that Afton Villa was not to be a restoration but rather the preservation or conservation of a nineteenth century garden. They would beautify, enhance, even superimpose their own ideas, but at the same time be careful, never in any way, to obliterate the original footprint of the garden or the house.
The approach they took between authenticity and inventiveness was both sensible and creative. They followed a difficult directive: to not attempt anything in the garden that cannot be maintained. The garden must be well kept even at sacrifice of alluring new projects. Adhering to these principles has imposed some restraints even as it has opened some freedoms and new horizons through the years.
The Music Room had perhaps once been the entry space downward to Mrs. Barrow’s hothouses and pineapple beds in the ravine. That seemed logical and the Trimbles did not hesitate to create a little white garden with no historical reference to the original gardens, except that it used a bare, forbidding alcove under the oak tree and seemed to be the last piece to drop into the puzzle of leading the visitor along the onward path.
The little “Music Room” garden is rimmed with white daffodils: ‘Thalia’, ‘Mt. Hood’, and ‘White Lion’. In their midst the Trimbles set four old marble cherubs playing musical instruments, encircling their bases with hostas. Someone later said the cherubs looked like little wood nymphs who have come up from the forest to play their music, and the garden from that day on was called “The Music Room.”
As you go up the steps on your left out of the Music Room, please walk straight ahead along the edge of the garden towards the woods and our next stop, Daffodil Valley.