Duke Farms
South Hillsborough,
New Jersey
May 2008
Duke Farms, the 2700 acre estate of tobacco and hydropower heiress
Doris Duke, is undergoing massive changes. On May 25, 2008 the
greenhouses that constitute Duke Gardens and are the main visitor
attraction, will be closed indefinitely. The entire site is to
become an “environmental showcase and learning center” according to
their press release.
For now, the visitor center is in a lovely carriage house.
What they’re new policies will be is anyone’s guess. When we
visited, all tours were by “appointment only”. The only tour we
could get was “Walk on the Wild Side”.
The mile-long walk takes you through a variety of habitats and
allows you to see some of the restoration work that the Farm is
doing.
You enter through a
deer fence and stroll through a woodland research
area.
The woods are badly degraded by deer and restoration work and
research are on-going.
I hate to say it, but as a visitor experience it was pretty ho-hum.
The habitats were very ordinary and there was not enough
interpretation to make what they were doing interesting. Although
we didn’t take it, I’d recommend the “Estate Park & Nature
Tour”. This is the kind of place that is much more interesting for
what they are doing than for what you can actually see. Having a
guide to tell you what they are doing and show you the work would
make it much more interesting.
There was a nice allee of sycamores, which gives you an idea of how
magnificent the estate must once have been.
The greenhouses look nice from the
outside. I hope they will reopen in some fashion in the
future.
Click here to see some Duke Farms photos.
Click here
to visit the official Duke Farms
website.