Oak Spring Garden Foundation
Upperville, Virginia
The Oak Spring estate of Paul and Bunny Mellon is comprised of 700 acres set in the Virginia hunt country and flanked by the Bull Run and Blue Ridge Mountains. The Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) is an operating foundation dedicated to perpetuating and sharing the gifts and ideas of Rachel “Bunny” Mellon whose passion for elegant design is expressed most fully in her home, garden, estate, and Library in Upperville, Virginia. OSGF is dedicated to inspiring and facilitating scholarship and public dialogue on the history and future of plants, including the culture of gardens and landscapes and the importance of plants for human well-being. OSGF is actively stewarding the land, already protected by Paul and Bunny Mellon as part of a conservation easement, to one day exemplify sustainable land management practices and provide ample opportunities for horticulture, arboriculture and sustainable agriculture. OSGF welcomes leaders in the fields of plant-related study and practice to its grounds to engage in meaningful dialogue and hosts invite-only workshops on a variety of topics relating to their mission. For more information, visit www.osgf.org.
Oak Spring has commissioned The 1717 Design Group to design several exhibits for their guests. The first involved a display highlighting selections from Bunny Mellon’s impressive collection of formal and casual dinnerware featuring botanical motifs. Located adjacent to the dining room in the Mellon’s primary residence, the furniture-grade display has a trellis-inspired base that supports a self-illuminated display chamber. The entire fixture has a hand-painted faux finish to complement the types of sophisticated faux finishes found throughout the Mellon house.
1717 Design was also invited to design conservation-quality casework for displaying changing exhibits originating from the Oak Spring Garden Library. Built in 1981 as a gift from her husband Paul Mellon, the Library was expanded in 1997 to contain her growing collection of books, manuscripts and art on plants, gardens, and landscapes. Bunny Mellon’s celebrated Oak Spring Garden Library comprises a collection of over 16,000 objects, including rare books, manuscripts, and works of art dating back to the 14th century. The collection mainly encompasses works relating to horticulture, landscape design, botany, natural history and voyages of exploration. Bunny Mellon’s collecting, guided by precise objectives and unerring taste, led to the acquisition of some of the most significant works in the history of botany, botanical illustration, and garden and landscape design—not only the most beautiful but also those of the greatest historical and cultural importance—at a time when the field was still only of tangential interest to botanists, historians, and art historians. The oak-clad cases with fabric-wrapped interiors are located in the Memory House Pavilion, a recently renovated space adjacent to the Library where OSGF hosts a variety of special events.
In late 2017, 1717 Design was asked to design an interpretive exhibit about Rachel “Bunny” Lowe Lambert Lloyd Mellon and her family in the Memory House Pavilion. Rachel Lambert’s interests in plants and gardens developed very early in her long life. At the age of ten, she began collecting books, and by the age of twelve was actively gardening, inspired in part by the Olmsted Brothers, sons of Frederick Law Olmsted who managed the grounds of her father’s estate in Princeton, New Jersey. These early experiences awakened the relentless interest, passion, and pleasure in gardens and books that followed Bunny Mellon throughout her lifetime. Her curiosity eventually brought her ideas into gardens across America, England, France, and Italy. Two of her garden designs still grace the grounds of the White House: the Rose Garden and the Eastern Garden, which was later renamed in honor of Bunny Mellon’s dear friend Jacqueline Kennedy.