A Great Gatsby Garden: The Lavish Long Island Estate That Inspired The Movie's Sets

There was a girl who grew up in the Phipps mansion on Long Island's Gold Coast and she was named Margaretbut she went by Peggie, and she married young and divorced. Her second marriage lasted longer and after her parents died, in the 1950s, she moved with her husband—a French diplomat, of course—into a smaller house on the estate, a comparatively modest white clapboard house called Orchard Hill. Much of the rest of the grounds, including 70 acres of gardens, she decided to open to the public. 



Peggie Phipps Boegner created a non-profit conservancy to oversee Old Westbury Gardens and then lived the rest of her life on the grounds, dying at home at age 99. Hers was a life F. Scott Fitzgerald would have recognized. In fact, he may have known her, as he and Zelda lived in nearby Great Neck in the 1920s when Peggie—whose grandfathers had founded, respectively, the United States Steel Corporation and Grace Shipping Line—was growing up.



By the time filmmaker Baz Lurhmann decided to appropriate the grounds and exterior of Westbury House to inspire the exterior sets for Daisy Buchanan's house in his 3-D remake of The Great Gatsby, which opened a few days ago in theaters, Peggie Phipps Boegner had been dead a few years. But the estate's elaborate Italianate walled garden, its trees espaliered into the shapes of candelabras, and its grand allées of linden trees are beautifully preserved.





 

1. "Buchanan's House"





 

2 The West Gate and Center Fountain at Old Westbury Gardens

3. "Nich Carraway's Cottage"



The Thatched Cottage at the Phipps Estate was a gift to Peggie for her sixth birthday in 1912.







4 Foxgloves in bloom at Old Westbury Gardens





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5 One of the statuary niches

6 The Temple of Love, a stone folly at the edge of a langorous pond

7  Yellow climbing roses

8  The view from the mansion's terrace, shrouded in mist.

 电影结尾的时候就是这样的雾气，在海湾对面隐隐约约看到一点绿光。:)