by In 1844 John Rodney Brinkle built an Italianate mansion in Wilmington, Del., and named it Gibraltar for the high, rocky outcropping upon which it was built. 55 years later, Hugh Rodney Sharp and his wife Isabella Mathieu du Pont purchased the house and greatly expanded it. The couple hired Marian Cruger Coffin to design the formal walled gardens adjacent to the house, and construction occurred between 1916 and 1923.
Marian Cruger Coffin was born 1876 and was one of the first women to work professionally as a landscape architect. She also designed many other gardens for such famous clientele as the Fricks, Vanderbilts, and du Ponts, including the famed gardens at Winterhur.
After Sharp’s death in 1968, the estate and gardens fell into complete disrepair. While the house and related buildings are clearly in a state of deterioration today, the gardens have been meticulously and faithfully restored by Preservation Delaware, who facilitated the purchase of the entire estate in 1998. The gardens are in the Italian Beaux Arts style, with layers of terraces rising from a flower garden at the bottom of the hill up to the estate on top. The gardens were created with spots to highlight the statues that the Sharps brought home from around the world.
The walled gardens still have an air of decay about them, with the fountain not running and the statues just a bit worse for the where, but this state rather added to their overall charm rather than detracting from it.
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