Magazine honors Old Westbury Gardens

Move over, Versailles, and step aside, Giverny: One of the most beautiful gardens in the world is right off the Long Island Expressway.

Old Westbury Gardens, an Old Westbury estate once owned by a turn-of-the-century financier, earned the honor of being one of the world's three best public gardens, as named by Four Seasons Magazine, the in-room publication of the elite hotel and resort company.

The magazine described Old Westbury Gardens as "not a mothballed garden. It is a vibrant, living, breathing, changing and growing landscape, so near to New York City (a half hour by car) yet so far away in spirit."

Old Westbury Gardens shared the magazine's top honor with the National Orchid Garden at the Singapore Botanic Gardens and the Royal Horticultural Society Garden Wisley in Surrey, England.

"We're happy about it," said Vincent Kish, Old Westbury Gardens' communication director.

The estate, built by U.S. Steel heir John Shaffer Phipps, contains a 44-room Charles II-style mansion surrounded by British-style gardens. Kish described it as "200 acres of quiet, bucolic space right here in Nassau County."

"It's really unlike anything else in the world," he said. "It's a combination of so many different elements. It's a little Italian, a little British, it's our Americanized version of these elements coming together."

The gardens open to the public for the season April 2, and will be open on weekends only until April 25, when the grounds will be open every day except Tuesdays, through October. Visitors are invited to bring their dogs to tour the grounds the weekend of April 16-17.