Ladew Topiary Gardens and Pleasant Valley House
Harford County, Harford County, Maryland
Marker Inscription
Henry Scarff acquired land here about 1747 and soon built a four-room house. Descendants added the three story central section by 1849. Harvey S. Ladew bought the house and property known as Pleasant Valley Farm from a Scarff descendant in 1929. Ladew add… transcription continues on the marker
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The Story
The oldest part of this house went up around 1747, when Henry Scarff settled a Maryland farm and raised a modest four-room dwelling; generations of his descendants enlarged it, adding the tall central block by 1849. In 1929 Harvey S. Ladew, a wealthy sportsman and self-taught gardener, bought the old Scarff place—then called Pleasant Valley Farm—and set about transforming its grounds into one of America's most celebrated topiary gardens, sculpting hedges and yews into fanciful shapes still admired today.
Why it matters
The property links two very different American stories on one patch of Maryland ground—an ordinary colonial farmstead that grew across a century, and its twentieth-century rebirth as a nationally renowned work of garden artistry.
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Related people
- · Henry Scarff
- · Harvey S. Ladew
Themes & tags
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