A Visit to the Gardens at Artemis Farm

Carol Goldberg has only loved one house in her life. She met the 1890 Victorian farmhouse as a 14-year-old hired to train horses in Westchester County, New York. Quickly, her immersion in everything equine grew to the point that she was begging her parents to drive her to the horse farm every weekend. Because it was a long commute from her Connecticut childhood home, her parents let her stay the weekends in the farmhouse. That’s when the house began to feel like home.

Most people move on, but Carol never did. Horse training became a career and she remained in the upstate New York neighborhood, keeping an eye on that farmhouse. In 1972, she convinced the owner to sell it to her. “I moved in with nothing but my dog, a bed to sleep on, and a card table for meals. But it didn’t matter, because all I did was work outside anyway.” In a moment of foresight, she named the property Artemis Farm, honoring the Greek goddess of vegetation, wild animals, and the hunt.

Furnishings took a carefully curated turn when Carol married teacher and antiques dealer Jesse Goldberg, in 1985. Carol’s focus began to shift away from the stables to beautifying the landscape. In her initial naiveté, she dug up roadside daylilies and transplanted them as informal accents running along stone walls. Infinitely proud of the results, she invited the local garden expert to show off her accomplishment and was more than a little humbled when she was diplomatically told that she could do better than just transplanting wild plants.

By 1989, Carol had begun focusing on real estate—with a specialty in horse farms and country properties. When she decided to remove her horse barn, Carol transformed the big, empty footprint into a large perennial garden. “That’s when I really got serious about gardening,” she recalls. She also wanted to retain the sense of place and its historical roots. When the garden swallowed up her first fifty plants (“They looked like just a drop in the bucket.”), she started making forays to nurseries. “I seem to have an affinity for combining colors and sizes,” she discovered.

Rather than drafting a design on paper, she found impromptu composition easier. “I’d design combinations on the wagons at the nursery, putting three plants together to see how they looked, then I’d bring them home and see how they worked before returning to the nursery to buy quantities. If I didn’t like a combo, I’d dig it up and plant it somewhere else on the property.”

Establishing a mood wasn’t only about plants. She commissioned a small pergola for the perennial garden made of vintage porch railings to serve as a focal point. Surrounded by blossoms, that structure provides a vertical element, supporting vines (especially clematis). An antique French water pump tucked into the plantings creates a retrospective mood while a large vintage urn gives the scene a sense of grandeur.

Carol added to the family room, screened porch, and kitchen. But the largest addition was a wing for Jesse’s art and antiques. Wall space was an important “need” the new room furnished, but it created an unbroken wall outside. So Carol had the idea to flank that wall with an outdoor dining pergola. 

A large round mirror (stored indoors during the winter) gives the blank wall personality. On either side of the mirror, vintage grill-like gates are hung to give the wall further texture, mood, and symmetry. A vintage livestock feed trough runs along the wall to serve as a bench for plants (or a sideboard, when they are entertaining) and a long country table with mismatched chairs makes the space perfect for hosting warm-weather dinner parties. A low, sitting-height stone wall defines the space, expanding the number of guests the outdoor room can accommodate.