The Knollwood Garden Club of Greenwich will bring together three local church handbell choirs on May 9 for a benefit concert at the Seaside Garden at Greenwich Point, with proceeds intended to support restoration of one of the town’s historic public landscapes. The event, titled “Let Freedom Ring! Celebrating America at 250,” is scheduled for Saturday, May 9, 2026, from 4 to 6 p.m., with a rain date of May 16. A reception will follow the concert.
The concert will be held in Old Greenwich at the Seaside Garden, a formal walled garden overlooking Long Island Sound that the Knollwood Garden Club maintains under an arrangement with the Town of Greenwich. Individual tickets are $50, and donations also are being accepted through the club’s events website. Sponsors for the program are the Bucknall Family Foundation and Eda Peterson and Family.
The musical program will feature the handbell choirs of Christ Church Greenwich, First Congregational Church of Greenwich and First Presbyterian Church of Greenwich. The three choirs will perform separately and together in a program of classical works, folk melodies and hymn tunes arranged for handbells. The concert also will include the premiere of a commissioned work, “Let Freedom Ring!,” composed by Jonathan Vaughn.
The choir directors are Adele Ozanne of Christ Church Greenwich, Craig Symons of First Congregational Church of Greenwich and Heather Antonissen of First Presbyterian Church of Greenwich. Each ensemble rehearses weekly during the church year and performs regularly at worship services and special occasions.
What gives the afternoon its weight is not only the music but the place itself. The concert is tied directly to the preservation of a garden that carries an older Greenwich story into the present. The Seaside Garden was designed for J. Kennedy Tod by Marian Cruger Coffin, the landscape architect whose work shaped many Greenwich estates in the early 20th century.
A historic image provided with the event materials (at right) identifies the site as the original design of the Seaside Garden by Marian Cruger Coffin for the J. Kennedy Tod estate, now Tod’s Point, and cites its publication in House & Garden, volume 37, page 35, in March 1920. The image shows the garden in its earlier form, with a circular center feature, planted borders and the water beyond, making clear how closely the design was tied to the shoreline setting.
A contemporary image included with the materials (above) shows the same setting in present-day terms: a contained garden space, bordered by walls and planted beds, still turned toward the Sound. The contrast between the archival image and the current view sharpens the purpose of the fundraiser. This is a program meant to help sustain a specific place that has remained part of Greenwich’s public life long after the estate era that produced it.
The title invokes the national semi-quincentennial, but the practical work remains local. A garden club, three congregations, volunteer musicians, private sponsors and a public site at Greenwich Point are being joined for one afternoon in service of restoration. That combination gives the event a distinctly Greenwich character. It draws on church music ministries that rehearse through the year, a garden club that has taken responsibility for stewardship, and a landscape that has outlasted private ownership to become part of the town’s common inheritance.
For residents, the appeal may rest as much in the setting as in the program. Handbells carry well in open air, and the Seaside Garden offers a fitting site for a concert intended to support its own restoration. In a town where public places often carry long private histories, the afternoon promises a straightforward exchange: music in a historic garden, offered so the garden itself can endure.
