b"Peter Blanchard at his home in Short Hills in the early 1950s with his parents and one of the family's many dogs. Sadly, his mother died just a few years after this picture was taken, when Peter was just 5.A Different Visionfor the WorldThe founder of Greenwood Gardens reflects onand livesthe maxim that less is moreAforthe TurtleaAsofBY TIA SWANSON Greenwood: Aaround the place. toP. Day and uncovered and newbillboardit home, Peter Blanchard III.Back Zoo has gone up at theBlanchard put it in his bookThe Blanchard home was surrounded by the spec-corner of South Orange Ave- Garden Path to Nature and the Past the place offerstacular, fantastical gardens that had been created in nue and Cherry Lane. Along- a walk out our doors and into our past, our collec- the decades before the Depression by New York real side a giant picture of a giraffetive past. The sprawling 28-acre estate in Short Hillsestate developer Joseph (andasmallerphotoofEs- harkens back to a time when Western Essex Countyin some ways reimagined by the Blanchards. Since sex County Executive Josephwas not a series of densely built suburban towns butit formally openedthe public in 2013, Green-DiVincenzo, who has devoted much of his long ten- mixfarms, small towns, forests and summerwood has drawn thousands of visitors from across ure at the top of county politics to enlarging the zoohouses for the wealthy of Newark and New York.the country. and developing the western edge of the Reservation)Blanchards own childhood there in the 50s andBut for the young Blanchard, an only child whose is a promise: The World In Your Backyard. 60s was already anachronistic. His father kept sheepmother died when he was 5, all of that was, and per-Forsake the zoo for another edge of the reserva- and horses on a vast field that had once been a pri- haps still is, secondary to the world just beyond his tion, however, and a whole different world presentsvate golf course and is now Old Short Hills Park.door:the2100-acreSouthMountainReservation itself; it isat first glance anywayless showy, al- The family had as many as 22 dogs at once, housedthat abuts the property.though it is in many ways no less exotic to our mod- in their own kennel. Blanchards job was to periodi- My greatest joy was the woods, he said in an ern sensibilities: it is Greenwood Gardens, a gener- cally close off the gate that opened onto Old Shortinterview, recalling long days when he would disap-ous gift to the public from the man who once calledHills Road so his dad could let the dogs out for a runpear down the.trails with two or more Labradors.18/ matters magazine / hearth + home 2022"