Skylands

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Skylands Manor

The State Botanical Garden at Skylands

An Outbuilding at Skylands Manor

For information about Skylands an estate in Seal Cove, Maine, see Martha Stewart.

Skylands 1,119 acres (4.5 km²), also known as the New Jersey Botanical Garden, is a mansion and 96-acre botanical garden in Ringwood State Park near the town of Ringwood, located within the Ramapo Mountains in Passaic and Bergen Counties in New Jersey, USA. Its formal gardens are open to the public year round.

The house and gardens, including formal gardens and specimen plantings, were built in the 1920's by Clarence MacKenzie Lewis, a New York City stockbroker and civil engineer. Lewis hired architect John Russell Pope to design the Tudor revival manor house (44 rooms). Mr. Pope's other works include the National Archives and the National Gallery of Art. The manor is a reproduction English mansion featuring rectangular, bay and oriel windows. A nine-hole golf course once graced this property.

In 1966 the entire estate was bought by the State of New Jersey to form a State Botanical Garden whose settings include a Lilac Garden, Magnolia Walk, the Wild Flower Garden, the Crab Apple Vista, an allée of 166 trees extending almost a half-mile, and the Perennial Garden. The entire section now comprises slightly over 4,000 acres (16 km²) of parkland.

The Winter Garden includes New Jersey's largest Jeffery pine (Pinus jeffreyi). Its east side features a weeping beech beside a century-old upright beech, as well as a Japanese umbrella pine. Other interesting non-native trees include an Algerian fir (Abies numidica) and Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica).