The Thomas Moran Trust Garden Party

The annual Thomas Moran Trust Garden Party took place on Saturday, August 5 unveiling the Mary Nimmo Moran 19th Century Garden created by the Garden Club of East Hampton with an Intersection of Art & Landscape.  The Event took place on the historical grounds of the Thomas Moran Home and Studio on Main Street, East Hampton with a navy blue tension tent with stars.

The benefit party will celebrate the final phase of this meticulous restoration project as it reaches its goal to restore the National landmark to its original splendor. The home served as a studio, workshop, and home for Thomas and Mary Moran. Thomas Moran was a landscape printmaker of the Hudson River School and several of his prints hang in the White House today.

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Mary Nimmo Moran, printmaker, painter and avid gardener left behind an oil painting from 1884 that the Garden Club of East Hampton pulled inspiration from. The perennial border garden consists of perovskia, dahlias, salvia, coreopsis, ageratum, kniphofia, cosmos, hibiscus and heliopsis.

“The Moran Studio has been a catalyst for artistic, community and family activity – then and now.  We look forward to creating a venue for art, history and environmental programs,” said Jill Malusky, Executive Director of the Trust.

Intersect of Art & Landscape bridges past artists with present artists.

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All proceeds from the Thomas Moran Garden Party will go towards the completion of the restoration.  “We are very grateful for the generosity of our supporters to date who have made the restoration of the Moran Studio exterior possible. As we move to complete the interior and landscape, additional gifts will be the catalyst that will allow us to complete the transformation of this important asset and open it to public use,” said Curt Schade, the Trust’s Chairman.

About The Studio of Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran via The East Hampton Historical Society:

In 1885, the great American landscape painter Thomas Moran and his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, a celebrated printmaker, and their children moved into their new studio and house that Moran himself designed on East Hampton’s historical Main Street. The Studio, as it has been known since the Moran family first occupied it, comprises Thomas Moran’s studio and the rooms they lived in, as well as the gardens and outbuildings.   The Moran Studio was the first artist’s studio built in East Hampton and it played a significant role in American art history. In its heyday The Studio was a lively center of the turn-of-the-19th-century art colony.   Overlooking the Village Green and Town Pond, the property offers one of the most distinguished vistas on Long Island’s East End and serves as the gateway to East Hampton’s Main Street Historic District. In 1965, the Thomas Moran Studio became one of the first National Historic Landmarks in America — the highest recognition accorded by the Department of the Interior to the nation’s most historically significant properties.

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About The Thomas Moran Trust via The East Hampton Historical Society

The Thomas Moran Trust is a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring the Moran Studio, gardens, and its four historically important outbuildings. In partnership with the National Park Service, the Town and the Village of East Hampton, as well as private, foundation, and corporate donors, this National Landmark will once again become a keystone of America’s artistic and cultural heritage.  Restoration on the property began in the fall of 2012, and it is scheduled to open to the public in the summer of 2018 as an educational arts center. Contributions to the Campaign for the Restoration of the Moran Studio are gratefully welcomed. Donations are tax deductible.

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Statement from the Garden Club of East Hampton

Perennial Border at the Thomas Moran House

The Garden Club of East Hampton is pleased to announce that the Robert D. L. Gardiner Foundation awarded a matching grant of $18,000 to restore Mary Nimmo Moran’s long border garden at the Thomas Moran House on Main Street.  The Foundation’s Director Kathryn M. Curran presented a check to GCEH president Beverly Kazickas and past president Hollis Forbes.

The Robert D.L. Gardiner Foundation’s mission is to educate, cultivate, encourage, and sponsor projects and institutions focused on preserving local history, art, culture, heritage, and traditions.  The historic Moran home, with artist studio and gardens, is registered as a National Landmark and being restored to its former glory of the late 1800’s.  Installation of the Perennial Garden began this Spring and will continue this summer.

Designed by Susan Cohen, Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, in partnership with the Garden Club of East Hampton, the long border at the Moran house is a tribute to its original designer, artist and en plein air etcher, Mary Nimmo Moran. Mrs. Moran was a passionate gardener and an artist of extraordinary merit, who created a lush, colorful and fragrant “old fashioned garden” at her home in East Hampton. Her 1894 oil painting of the garden, on display at the Osborne Jackson House on Main Street, guided our work.  It depicts hollyhocks. iris and phlox, all present in today’s garden.  In some cases, we chose plants that would have been available to Mrs. Moran, such as the dahlia ‘Stolz von Berlin,’ introduced to the United States from Germany in 1884, or the annual Abelmoschus manihot, sunshine hibiscus, found in garden catalogs dating to the early 1800’s.  In other cases, we chose modern cultivars of old fashioned plants, such as hollyhock ‘Sunshine,’ which blooms annually rather than every other year, and rose of Sharon ‘Aphrodite,’ which is a sterile cultivar of an otherwise invasive plant. The border will be at its peak in July and August, reflecting the fact that the Morans were typically in residence in East Hampton during the summer months.

For More information on the Thomas Moran Trust go HERE