Eden Found

by ANDREA McHUGH • photography by ERIN McGINN

Gardens are aplenty in Little Compton, the idyllic swath of peninsula flanked by the Atlantic Ocean along its southern coast and the Sakonnet River to the west. But to call John Gwynne and Mikel Folcarelli’s verdant oasis a garden here is like calling a symphony a song.

The couple’s life’s work is hidden in plain sight, bordering the town’s main road, but seemingly otherworldly with nearly two dozen themed gardens set amid winding paths, sky-high trees, secret doorways, intriguing sculpture, wondrous woodlands, tranquil water features and curious nooks that spill across more than an acre.

“I’ve been working on this garden for 46 years, and Johnny started a few years before I met him in 1980,” says Folcarelli. “We just did it to make us happy. We did this serious pursuit of horticulture over the past nearly 50 years, and we opened it to share it with the public.”

Sakonnet Garden is flourishing on land surrounding their private home. To manage visitation as such, guests are required to make a reservation and purchase tickets (a parking spot with driver is $25.00; each additional passenger is $20.00). It is neither an event space nor a picnic spot. It’s simply a private home with a decades-in-the-making botanical sanctuary that a couple of extraordinarily talented and passionate green thumbs decided to invite others inside.

Gwynne’s parents bought the five-acre property as a summer home in 1961. His grandparents had lived just a stone’s throw away, and the garden began in earnest in the mid-1970s, first as just a small clearing deep within a natural tangle of Autumn Olives, Oriental Bittersweet and local Arrowwood Viburnum.

I’ve been working on this garden for 46 years, and Johnny started a few years before I met him in 1980. We just did it to make us happy. We did this serious pursuit of horticulture over the past nearly 50 years, and we opened it to share it with the public.

Mikel Folcarelli, Sakonnet Garden

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden lite purple flowers

Long before they even met, both Gwynne and Folcarelli each had a childhood trajectory pointing to creative cultivation intertwined with naturalism.

Folcarellii grew up on a farm in Clayville, a small village in North Situate, Rhode Island. He graduated from Rhode Island School of Design then trounced the globe throughout a two-decade design career at Polo Ralph Lauren. Later, Folcarellii transitioned his design work to luxury hotels, then returned to luxury fashion as the Head of Global Visual Identity for French label Façonnable.

Gwynne’s been exploring the grounds of this leafy refuge since he was 12-years-old, a curiosity that led him to a career in landscape architecture and interior design. He became a highly touted designer of zoo habitats, most notably as the long-time head of design for the Bronx Zoo.

“We were both designers, so this is a playpen,” describes Folcarelli one early summer morning, surrounded by lush gardens still speckled with dew.

The couple hasn’t followed any blueprints over the decades; instead, it’s been piece by piece, or “room by room” endeavor inspired by everything from world travel to Impressionist art. “We get a bee and bonnet and then we run with it,” chuckles Folcarelli.

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden white flower long

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden John with guests

To date, Sakonnet Garden includes 20 dedicated spaces with names like Rhododendron Punchbowl and areas defined by their color scheme, including the Orange Garden, Green Garden and Yellow Garden. “This is a different tree peony. It has fantastic, big, exotic foliage and tiny little funny yellow flowers,” Folcarelli says with amusement, gently tugging a branch in the Yellow Garden to show its textures. “They look like fat little buttercups.” The couple is continually thinking about enhancements, hunting, for example, for even more interesting yellow plants, including varieties that will eventually create a chartreuse canopy. “We want it to feel like you’re walking in a luminous lantern,” Folcarelli describes.

The Silver Garden draws inspiration from French Post-Impressionist Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), considered the “master of shimmering luminosity.” Folcarelli describes the artist’s work as “nacreous, very luminous; everything feels kind of shiny” — an aesthetic the couple has reimagined in living, growing form.

“We’re inspired by art, but we’re playing with light. Increasingly, we realize it’s a theater set when you walk through, you’re going through set after set after set,” says Folcarelli. “Whether the plants are the performers or you are, you don’t know.”

They encourage growing vines and such, sometimes shaping them into interesting forms, or repurposing things like old garden hoses to create fencing.

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden wood wall door

The Pollinator Garden, created about a decade ago, is a cacophony of colorful flowers, shrubs, and grasses reaching skyward. Its purpose is to provide nectar, pollen, and habitat for pollinating insects and birds, with the goal to have “a hole in every leaf,” says Folcarelli. “By September, you’re just walking through tunnels. It’s like walking between two Jackson Pollack or Joan Mitchell – she was much better – canvases,” he says. “We’re inspired by Abstract Impressionism, and as we got in there, we said, ‘Find taller plants!’ So now we want 10-footers. We want you to be just inspired by that, and the subtropics are inspired a little by Rousseau, those crazy, surreal paintings.”

Also called the biodiversity garden, the couple continues to develop the Pollinator Garden with different methodologies. “ We’re trying to create the forest primeval soil out there,” says Folcarelli, referencing Longfellow’s famed poem about the American wilderness. The goal is to grow special woodland wildflowers and other plants. “We’re experimenting. It’s a test tube for us.”

An allée of towering Cryptomeria (Japanese cedar trees) and wall of 12’ boxwood lends the garden an Alice in Wonderland quality, offering a hint of what it feels like to wander among California’s redwoods, while the Subtropical Quadrant offers big leaf magnolias and oversized banana and canna leaves that make you wonder if you’ve brought your passport along.

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden Mikel John silver flowers

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden yellow flowers

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden field white flowers

The Pollinator Garden, created about a decade ago, is a cacophony of colorful flowers, shrubs, and grasses reaching skyward.

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden pollinator garden

The labyrinth of lush landscape hasn’t gone unnoticed. The garden has been featured more than once in The New York Times, has been featured on PBS, and the gentlemen have been guest speakers at myriad events. The couple’s half-century gardening journey will be chronicled in an upcoming book, slated for publication by Rizzoli in early 2027. Photos for the project were taken over three years, and Gwynne and Folcarelli referenced volumes of garden records they’ve kept since the beginning.

Still, Sakonnet Garden is overwhelmingly peaceful, the kind of place where you feel like you’ve discovered a precious slice of paradise.

“We hide,” Folcarelli jokes, “but when people find it, it’s special. The sign is tiny and it’s always been a secret garden. It started that way so we keep it that way.” The couple say some visitors walk though, experience the botanical marvel, and are then merrily on their way, while others linger; wandering aimlessly or sitting on one of the benches, taking it all in. “It does feel like a bubble within a bubble. People feel safe here. Maybe because they have a hard time finding it and when they get here, you go through the bushes into a space where there’s nothing from the outside you can see. One of the benches seems to be where people tell their innermost thoughts,” says Folcarelli. “It’s really interesting, I think it’s because it’s so private. You see people talking for a long time sometimes. We like that it gives people joy, makes people happy.”

Happiness is a palpable undercurrent throughout the garden; smiles naturally spread across your face thanks to their handiwork (along with the work of landscape architect Sam Bowen, gardener Tori Mulhern, and Gwynne’s sister Adeline Gwynne Kurz). There’s a rustic barn and paddock on site that’s home to a miniature horse whose name is literally “Happy.” While Folcarelli and Gwynne could have just as easily kept the entrancing escape all to themselves, they instead have opened their arms to the public to spread that same joy.

We’re inspired by art, but we’re playing with light. Increasingly, we realize it’s a theater set when you walk through, you’re going through set after set after set. Whether the plants are the performers or you are, you don’t know.

Mikel Folcarelli

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden pollinator view

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Sakonnet Garden
510 West Main Road
Little Compton, RI

Touring the garden is by reservation only.

SakonnetGarden.net

Deep Blue_Sakonnet Garden John in garden

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