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Canandaigua/ Sonnenberg Gardens, 151
Charlotte St., Canandaigua. What a treasure is this – and so
unexpected in busy Canandaigua. Restored in 1973 after 40 years of
neglect, the Victorian gardens are recognized by the Smithsonian as some
of the most magnificent ever created in America. The 50-acre garden
estate around their 40-room summer home was planned at the turn of the
century by Mary Clark Thompson, a Canandaigua native who married
Frederick F. Thompson, a New Yorker whose family started Chase Manhattan
and Citibank. Widowed at 67, she traveled the world to create nine
formal gardens, an arboretum, a greenhouse complex and more as a
memorial to her husband (who, we were told, rather preferred his fishing
cottage down Canandaigua Lake to Sonnenberg, German for “Sunny
Hill”). Visitors admire the Japanese hill
garden and tea house, the vast Italian garden with four sunken fleur de
lis parterres and the Rose Garden launched with 4,000 bushes from the
former Jackson and Perkins Rose Gardens in nearby Newark. Other
attractions are Mrs. Thompson's favorite Blue & White Garden, a
Pansy Garden in which even the bird bath is shaped like a pansy, and a
rock garden entered through a canyon of puddingstone and including 5,500
feet of streams, waterfalls and pools fed by geysers and springs. Of
interest as much as the gardens are the accompaniments: belvederes,
statues, gazebos, arbors, a temple of Diana, a sitting Buddha, a
fountain with a statue of Hercules and even a Roman bath. The vast South
Lawn with its rare specimen trees is remarkable: Mrs. Thompson liked to
give house parties and asked guests to bring trees to plant, each guest
trying to outdo the other. The estate’s greenhouse complex, currently
undergoing preservation, is one of the most historically significant in
the country. The mansion, a testament to the
extravagances of the Gilded Age, has its own delights, among them the
Lavender and Old Lace gift shop. The Festival of Lights, in which
the mansion is decorated and the gardens are gloriously illuminated with
lights and themed figures, extends the season from Thanksgiving to New
Year’s. Also on the grounds near the greenhouses is the Finger
Lakes Wine Center, where you can sample and purchase wines from
several dozen area wineries. (585) 394-4922. www.sonnenberg.org.
Gardens open daily, 9:30 to 5:30, mid-May to mid-October; also nightly
in holiday season, 4:30 to 9:30. Adults, $8.50. Granger Homestead and Carriage
Museum, 295 North Main St., Canandaigua. Gideon Granger, who was postmaster
general for Thomas Jefferson, moved here in 1813 and resolved to build a
homestead that would be “unrivaled in all the nation.” This pale
yellow Federal mansion is the result and its period rooms with original
furnishings reflecting four generations of Granger ownership are on
display. Nearly 50 horse-drawn vehicles, from coaches and sleighs to an
undertaker's hearse, are shown in the Carriage Museum. A 45-minute
carriage tour of historic neighborhoods is offered Friday afternoons by
reservation. The twelve-acre estate also includes a pillared building
housing a restored 19th-century law office. (585) 394-1472.
www.grangerhomestead.org. Open Tuesday-Friday 1 to 4, mid-May to
mid-October; also Saturday and Sunday 1 to 4, June-August. Adults, $5. Boat Tours.
Canandaigua Lake is known as a summer resort area and the best way to
experience it is by boat. Town native Gray Hoffman gives enlightening
narrated tours five times daily in summer under the auspices of Captain
Gray's Boat Tours, from the dock at the Inn on the Lake. He gives
the history of the lake and tells who lives in which cottage on an
hour-long tour that even natives find informative. The Canandaigua
Lady, the only authentic replica of a paddle-wheeler in the Finger
Lakes, offers lunch, dinner and sightseeing tours daily in summer. It is
based at the Steamboat Landing restaurant, 205 Lakeshore Drive. Finger Lakes Performing Arts
Center, Lincoln Hill Road, Canandaigua, (585)
325-7760. Since 1983, the outdoor shell on the Finger Lakes Community
College campus has drawn thousands for summertime concerts by the
Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and visiting entertainers. The RPO
presents Saturday evening concerts, seating 2,600 in the shell and
another 10,000 on the lawn. Guest entertainers over the years have
ranged from Barry Manilow, Sting and John Denver to Steve Lawrence and
Eydie Gorme, Bonnie Raitt and Peter, Paul and Mary. Shopping.
A big stuffed pig wearing sunglasses sits outside on a wicker chair at Renaissance
– the Goodie II Shoppe at 56 South Main St. Proprietor Laura
Harkins stocks all the socially correct gifts, from jewelry to porcelain
dolls, bath things, Port Merion china and lovely Christmas ornaments.
Teddybears, cookbooks (we picked up Linda McCarthy's for a vegetarian
son) and nifty paper plates and napkins abound. The Country Ewe Ltd.
specializes in hand-knit sweaters from around the world among its
outstanding array of sportswear, outerware, accessories and gifts. From
hand-loomed blankets to golf wear, this expanding store has something
for anyone of style. A fun shop to explore on the west
side of Canandaigua is Cat's in the Kitchen at 367 West Ave. Here
Laurel Wemett has collected, from tag sales and auctions, all the things
our mothers and grandmothers used in the kitchen. She specializes in the
Depression era to the 1960s, and it's fun to check the old canisters,
cookie jars, china, pots and pans and the corner full of old cookbooks. Farther afield is Cheshire,
billed as “a little bit of New England awaiting discovery.” The
Cheshire Union, 4244 Route 21, is a renovated schoolhouse where Biff
and Rusty Brundage run a gift shop, antiques center, the Schoolhouse
Deli and the Company Store. Thousands turn out for its annual folk fair
and antique show. “Everything Grape and More” is
the theme of Arbor Hill Grapery, a delightful place at 6461 Route
64 in Bristol Springs. John and Katie Brahm, he a former Widmer Wine
Cellars executive, are proof that wines aren't the only good use for
grapes. They sell wine sauces, grape-filled cookies, hot grape sundaes,
grape pies, wine-motif wallpaper, vinegars, gewürztraminer wine jelly
and their Arbor Hill Winery wines. Widmer Wine Cellars,
1 Lake Niagara Lane, Naples. Swiss immigrant John Jacob Widmer,
whose home is still on view, launched this hillside winery in 1888.
Lately sold to Canandaigua Wine Co., Widmer's is now part of the
nation's third largest wine-producing firm. Its winery tour, one of the
best in the East, starts with a twelve-minute video shown through the
end of a wine barrel. The half-hour guided tour takes you through
ancient subterranean passageways where wine is aged in oak barrels, past
the famous rooftop sherry barrels and into the fascinating bottling and
labeling room. The publicity notes “there are a number of stairs to
traverse.” The visitor may choose instead to relax in the tasting room
for an extensive wine-tasting and sales of wines, juices, jellies and
Finger Lakes items. In the adjacent Manischewitz Winery
cellars, which moved in 1986 from Brooklyn, two rabbis are employed
fulltime to oversee the world’s largest production of kosher wines.
Tours are offered Monday-Thursday except Jewish holidays. (585) 374-6311 or (800) 836-5253.
www.widmerwine.com. Open Monday-Saturday 10 to 4, Sunday 11:30 to 4:30.
May-October; rest of year, daily 1 to 4. Extra-Special
The Wizard of Clay Pottery,
7851 Route 20A, Bloomfield. Out in the middle of nowhere in the
Bristol Hills are seven geodesic domes that are home to ex-Rochester
teacher Jim Kozlowski's pottery empire. Visitors come from across the
world – they mark their hometowns with pins on a map in his workshop
– to see “the workshop where the wizards work wonders.” The
Wednesday we visited was Jim’s afternoon for golf, according to an
assistant who called herself a wizette. So we had to be satisfied
reading lists of the 29 steps to making a Bristoleaf pot and the twenty
most often asked questions and their answers, both garnished with a
sense of humor. Jim and his son Jamie make each piece individually, but
a staff helps with the decoration. Their trademark Bristoleaf pottery is
decorated with delicate imprints from all kinds of leaves picked in the
surrounding hills. Jim is most proud of his signed and numbered limited
editions, particularly those decorated with leaves hand-painted in gold
and selling for up to $225 a bowl. Two domes house more than 1,000
pottery lamps with shades; another, bakeware and planters; still
another, a zoo craft gallery of arts and crafts reflecting the animal
kingdom. There are even a gazebo and a nature trail. It sounds hokey,
but isn't really. (585) 229-2980.
www.wizardofclay.com. Open daily, 9 to 5.
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