Inspired by English gardens, Broccoli Hall is a series of connected garden rooms, each differing in mood and content. This private garden, located in Amenia, New York, is open to the public twice a year. See tour dates below.
Next Tour
May 10, 2025, 10 am - 4 pm
Tickets Purchased in Advance
Visitors to Broccoli Hall describe this English-style cottage garden as “incredible,” “inspirational,” “magical”—and they come back again and again. Starting in 1985 with 1-1/2 acres of bare earth, Maxine Paetro collaborated with horticulturist Tim Steinhoff to create a series of enchanting garden rooms.
About Broccoli Hall
Broccoli Hall is a private garden in Amenia, New York, that is open to the public twice a year. Visitors say that the features they like best are the boxwood-lined cottage garden with an apple tunnel, the brick courtyard, the secret woodland garden blooming with crabapples and white-and-pink daffodils in May, the abundant three hundred foot long June border with roses, peonies and tall bearded irises, the koi ponds and the pink, five-sided treehouse with long views of distant hills.
About the Founder
Maxine Paetro is an American author who has collaborated with best-selling author James Patterson on the Women’s Murder Club novel series and standalone novels. She has written both fiction and non-fiction books, including the widely acclaimed How to Put Your Book Together and Get a Job in Advertising. Maxine Paetro has 26 New York Times #1 bestsellers.
In 1984 Paetro created Broccoli Hall in Amenia, New York. The English-style cottage garden includes a series of enchanted garden rooms and has been featured in national magazines.
Articles
"Painting a Vision at Broccoli Hall," Victoria Magazine
"The Garden at Broccoli Hall: A Sunny Hillside and a Fertile Imagination Create a Cottage Fantasy," House & Garden
"For the Love of a Garden," Country Homes
Essay
I came upon the house in Smithfield by accident. The real estate broker hadn’t meant to show me the place; we were on the way to somewhere else traveling along a minor dirt road. I asked her to stop the car. I got out and stared. The house was a small, clapboard-sided, Cape Cod clinging to a naked rise. The wedge-shaped, acre and a half parcel floated discretely, ship-like, between the road and the hilly sea of a neighbor’s open farmland.
Teddy Bear's Picnic
You're sure of a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today
You better go in disguise
For every bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today is the day the teddy bears have their picnic
What Visitors Say About Broccoli Hall
The Cats of Broccoli Hall
A Place for herself
"My tree house refreshes my eyes and my spirit," says writer Maxine Paetro of the five-sided structure perched in the trees at the edge of her upstate New York garden. "The Tree House of the August Moon is a peach-stucco folly with lots of windows and doors and built-in seating that looks out over distant hills," she notes.