I am thrilled to open the doors to this 194-seat dining destination thoughtfully decorated much like my Bedford, New York farm. The menu features French-inspired cuisine along with some of my own favorite recipes - all with the freshest, locally sourced ingredients. Among them - Classic Niçoise Salad, Oysters Rockefeller, Whole Roast Herb Chicken served with my Smashed Baked Potato. And for dessert, my Upside-Down Lemon Meringue Pie. These are some of the same dishes I serve to family and friends when I entertain. And don't forget, at The Bedford by Martha Stewart, one can also enjoy my signature cocktails, such as my Martha-tini and my delicious Frozen Pomegranate Martha-rita. We've worked tirelessly to bring my farmhouse in Bedford, New York to life in Las Vegas! I know you'll love the food and your visit to The Bedford!
Here are some photos, enjoy.
We did it! All our hard work has paid off. Today is the opening day for my first-ever restaurant, The Bedford by Martha Stewart. I can’t wait to hear what you think!
Here is a peek inside The Bedford. Hanging copper pans in a variety of sizes from my MARTHA by Martha Stewart collection adorn the kitchen area.
Visit our website at Martha.com to order your copper pots today. These tri-ply, user-friendly pots and pans are must-haves for any kitchen.
This décor in The Bedford was inspired by my own 1925 farmhouse in New York. I display many of my crystal entertaining pieces on shelves in my Winter House Brown Room.
Similar prints were put up on the walls – also inspired by photos decorating the rooms in my home.
Our kitchen is large with top-quality all stainless steel appliances.
The windows in this area of the dining room look out to photos of my paddocks, boxwood, and my allée of majestic pin oaks.
Another restaurant cabinet shows the many cake stands and dishes inspired by my own personal everyday collections.
Over the last couple of weeks, our team has been working hard to get all the finishing touches done in time for opening day. Here, menus are taken out of the boxes and folded.
The wait staff gathers to review the computer programs for ordering and check out processes.
Final touches are also made at the bar, where signature cocktails such as my Martha-rita and my Martha-tini will be made.
Cocktail napkins feature the sycamore tree – the symbol of my Bedford farm.
Here’s our own EVP of Home, Kevin Sharkey, and our Culinary EVP, Thomas Joseph, who were both instrumental in the development of The Bedford by Martha Stewart.
Here I am with Chef Pierre Schaedelin and the talented team of chefs at The Bedford. Chef Pierre is the owner of PS Tailored Events. He and I have planned many menus together for my parties and gatherings at all my homes. He also helped to develop the delicious menu for The Bedford.
Here’s a wide view of the restaurant showing some of the outdoor space with the Bedford Gray furniture and beautiful lush green boxwood, climbing clematis, and ferns. Doesn’t this area remind you of my winding pergola at my farm?
Just before our launch party last night, the white marble dessert buffet table was set.
And look who surprised me and came to the opening – my dear friend, Snoop Dogg! He never disappoints!
I am so happy with how The Bedford turned out. I know you’ll love it too.
Maintaining a large farm of gardens, groves, hayfields, and woodlands is a time consuming job. Whenever I am home, I drive around the entire property daily to make sure everything is in good condition.
I especially love all the trees, and have planted thousands here at Bedford. Unfortunately, sometimes trees need to be cut down due to poor growth, damage, or disease. Recently, I instructed my outdoor grounds crew to remove a dead ash tree at the edge of my pinetum.
Here are some photos and a couple of videos showing our process, enjoy.
This is my pinetum – an arboretum of pine trees and other conifers. I first planted it almost 15-years ago in a field behind my large Equipment Barn and near my weeping willow grove. This collection has grown extremely well and I continue to add additional specimens every year.
The collection includes pine trees, but I have also included many spruces, firs, and other evergreens. I love all the different sizes and varieties.
However, just to the side of the weeping willow grove, at he edge of the pinetum, one can see a diseased and dead, or dying, tree – most of it is already bare of foliage.
Here is another picture. The tree was an eyesore – visible whenever one drove down the carriage road. It had to be removed. This particular tree is an ash tree – one of many infested and killed by the emerald ash borer.
The borer larvae kill ash trees by tunneling under the bark and feeding on the part of the tree that moves water and sugars up and down its trunk. On this ash tree, in another part of the farm, one can see the bark beginning to peel away. Eventually this tree will also be cut down.
This is the lower part of the same tree – also quite damaged by the borer. These insects kill small trees within one to two years and large trees within three to four years once it is infested.
And here is an image showing the damage done by the emerald ash borer under the bark. The ash borer, also known by the acronym EAB, is responsible for the destruction of tens of millions of ash trees in 30 US states since it was first identified in this country in 2002.
I instructed my outdoor grounds crew to take down the ash tree last week. Pasang is our resident arborist. He is very strong and very skilled at taking down many of the smaller trees around the farm. Here he is in the bucket of our Hi-Lo preparing to climb into the tree.
Here, Pasang starts by removing the smaller branches first. It is quite a process – an arborist must work carefully to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
Pasang then moves onto slightly bigger limbs, taking them down one by one – and always securing himself to the tree with the proper safety equipment.
Each long section of tree is cut by chainsaw. The ash tree grows at a moderate rate of about a foot to two feet per year. At maturity, they tend to reach between 50 and 80 feet tall.
In this image, one can see most of the top is already cut down. As all the branches are cut, they are neatly placed in piles, so they are easy to remove later.
This day was quite warm. Here’s Pasang stopping for a moment before tackling the rest of the tree.
As soon as he is low enough, Pasang works from the safety of the bucket.
He is able to take off chunks of the trunk.
Here, Pasang stops for a quick photo. The tree is now low enough to cut down from the bottom.
And here is the stump. Ash is a hardwood, along with cherry, oak, walnut, and maple. Thanks Pasang and Chhiring for taking down the tree. See the two videos below.
My outdoor grounds crew foreman, Chhiring, watched from below and positioned the Hi-Lo wherever it was needed. He narrates this short video as Pasang starts to work on the tree. Pasang is using one of our trusted STIHL extended reach trimmers.
In this video, Pasang is in the middle of the tree and cutting off one of the larger sections.
My Stewartia Garden continues to thrive at my Bedford, New York farm.
My Stewartia Garden is located across from my long clematis pergola. The space was once planted with rows and rows of ferns and lilies. Now, the garden still has growing tiger lilies and ferns, but it is also filled with beautiful Stewartia trees and lush shade-loving specimens including Cotinus, Epimediums, Syneilesis, Astilboides, and more. I am so pleased with how well it’s matured over the last few years.
Enjoy these photos.
Behind my Tenant House, I designed lovely gardens of shade-loving plants that are thriving. Beautiful views of these gardens can be seen from the large windows of the home where my daughter and grandchildren stay when they visit.
Right now, the garden is dotted with gorgeous tiger lilies. Native to China and Japan, these robust flowers add striking beauty to any border. I love how they look with their bright and showy orange colored blooms.
Tiger lilies, Lilium lancifolium, bloom in mid to late summer, are easy to grow and come back year after year. I also have them across the carriage road in my long and winding pergola garden.
One can see them here. And on the left is a row of towering bald cypress trees, Taxodium distichum – a deciduous conifer. Though the bald cypress is native to swampy areas, it is also able to withstand dry, sunny weather and is hardy in USDA climate zones 5 through 10.
The leaves are compound and feathery, made up of many small leaflets that are thin and lance-shaped. Each leaflet is less than two inches long, alternating along either side of a central stem. They are a medium green now and turn russet brown in fall. Like trees with leaves, bald cypress trees drop their needles in the fall leaving the tree – well, bald.
One of the most interesting characteristics of the bald cypress is its knees. Known by the scientific name pneumatophores, these growths are specialized root structures that grow vertically above the moist soil near the tree. It is believed that these structures aid the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange in the roots. Looking carefully at the ground, one can see many of these unique knees.
If you didn’t already guess, I named this garden the Stewartia garden because I planted several Stewartia trees in this space. Stewartia is a species of flowering plant in the family Theaceae, native to Japan and Korea. All varieties are slow-growing, all-season performers that show off fresh bright green leaves in spring, white flowers resembling single camellias in summer, and colorful foliage in autumn. Some of the varieties in this garden include: Stewartia gemmata, Stewartia x. henryae, Stewartia pseudocamellia ‘Ballet’, Stewartia monadelpha, Stewartia rostrata, and Stewartia henry ‘Skyrocket’. And do you know why I love Stewartia trees? Well, Stewart is my last name after all. However, there is no relation. “Stewartia” is named for Scottish nobleman and botanist, John Stuart, who had imported the plant to his personal London garden. He later served as British prime minister from 1762 to 1763.
Stewartias feature stunning bark that exfoliates in strips of gray, orange, and reddish brown once the trunk attains a diameter of two to three inches. This one is maturing so nicely.
I also have Cotinus in this bed. Cotinus, the smoketree, or smoke bush, is a genus of two species of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, closely related to the sumacs.
Their smooth, rounded leaves come in exceptional shades of deep purple, clear pinkish-bronze, yellow, and green.
Some of the plants in this area include the Japanese painted ferns – beautiful mounds of dramatic foliage with luminescent blue-green fronds and dark central ribs that fade to silver at the edges.
Lady’s mantle, Alchemilla vulgaris, grows along one edge. It is a clumping perennial which typically forms a mound of long-stalked, circular, scallop-edge light green leaves, with tiny, star-shaped, chartreuse flowers.
This is Pulmonaria, or lungwort – a beautiful, versatile, hardy plant. Lungworts are evergreen or herbaceous perennials that form clumps or rosettes. They are covered in hairs of varied length and stiffness. The spotted oval leaves were thought to symbolize diseased, ulcerated lungs, and so were once used to treat pulmonary infections.
This is Syneilesis palmata. Over time, these plants form a sizeable patch of green umbrella-shaped leaves. Mature foliage can be more than a foot across with deeply toothed, narrow leaves – it is really an interesting plant.
Thalictrum, or Meadow Rue, is a robust, upright, clump-forming perennial featuring clouds of lavender mauve flowers. These flowers bloom profusely mid to late summer on tall burgundy upright stems above foliage of lacy, green leaves.
Astilboides is an interesting plant with huge, bright green leaves that are round and flat and measure up to 24-inches across. The effect is dramatic, and beautiful among other hardy perennials.
I also planted Cotoneaster in one corner of the garden. Cotoneaster is a vigorous, dense, evergreen shrub with soft arching stems studded with leathery, glossy, rounded, dark green leaves. These plants work well for a low hedge – I only wish I had planted more.
The hostas are so lush with their varying in leaf shape, size, and textures. Hostas have easy care requirements which make them ideal for many areas. I have them all around the farm. Hosta is a genus of plants commonly known as hostas, plantain lilies and occasionally by the Japanese name, giboshi. They are native to northeast Asia and include hundreds of different cultivars.
Here is a beautiful white hosta flower. The plant flowers feature spikes of blossoms that look like lilies, in shades of lavender or white. The bell-shaped blooms can be showy and exceptionally fragrant.
Epimediums are long-lived and easy to grow and have such attractive and varying foliage. Epimedium, also known as barrenwort, bishop’s hat, and horny goat weed, is a genus of flowering plants in the family Berberidaceae.
In another area, the bright red berries of the Viburnum. These berries replace the creamy-white, flat-headed flowers that bloom in spring.
This garden bed continues to be a work in progress, but I love how it looks. Every year, more and more plants cover the space and create a lush, green carpet of beautiful foliage.
Martha Pins
Martha Tweets
