Mabel Choate

[2] Her father Joseph Choate was a prominent lawyer, and served as U.S Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1899 to 1904.

Her mother, Caroline Sterling, an artist and educational reformer, played an instrumental role in advancing women’s higher education, and, along with a group of women including Annie Nathan Meyer, founded Barnard College at Columbia University in 1888.

[3][4] In July 1926, she met Fletcher Steele, prominent American landscape architect, while he was delivering a lecture at the Lenox Garden Club.

[5] With the help of Fletcher Steele, she developed a series of modernist gardens at Naumkeag, which made it as one of the horticultural show places of the Berkshires.

[8] She was also a collector of ceramics, furniture, and fine and decorative arts including from China and India.