AMERICAN DREAM

Steeped in history, this Connecticut garden is a relaxing weekend retreat for New York-based interior designer Alexandra Champalimaud and her financier husband Bruce Schnitzer

- FIONA McCARTHY

We started with the aim of not making it too formal,’ says Portuguese-born, New York-based interior designer Alexandra Champalimaud of the elegant but languidly winding garden belonging to the weekend retreat she owns with her Texan financier husband Bruce Schnitzer.

Situated in the heart of the pretty Connecticut town of Litchfield, the 15-acre garden flows from the back of the simple but handsome L-shaped white clapboard house – built in 1753 for the American politician Oliver Wolcott (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) – and across various paved areas that Bruce and Alexandra have created for sitting, eating and garden-gazing. Continuing past a swimming pool and pond, it then meanders gently down, framed by a woodland filled with tall oak, maple, copper beech and shagbark hickory trees, to the Bantam River flowing at the very end. ‘It’s a garden full of adventure,’ enthuses Alexandra.