Wildflower Farms resort brings nature to New Yorkers

The just-opened Wildflower Farms, an Auberge resort set on a former tree nursery in pastoral Gardiner, NY, is luring affluent urbanites with its luxurious rustic delights.

“Last week, this was a loading dock. This week, it’s alive,” says general manager Manolo Sorensen, formerly of André Balazs’ Sunset Beach Hotel on Shelter Island and The Maker hotel in Hudson. “This is incredible. I’m the GM of a hotel, and I have two farmers reporting to me!”

Indeed, the 140-acre property (rooms from $1,000 per night) boasts a working farm where guests can feed chickens, pick produce and snip fresh flowers.

It’s tucked in a quiet corner of Ulster County, where Auberge’s owners, Phillip Rapoport and Kristin Soong Rapoport, along with their partner Zachary Kleinhandler, have built a high-design destination to satisfy the escapist Instagram feeds of affluent urbanites looking for a tightly edited version of fancy farm life.

Individual cabins and cottages are outfitted with custom furniture and rugs by Manhattan firm Ward & Gray. Each of the 65 units has a private terrace and about half boast fireplaces.

Thick bouquets bursting with cornflowers, sunflowers and zinnia sit next to Phaidon tomes on garden design. Bathrooms feature double vanities with inset planters (naturally) and soaking tubs.

The resort also offers a spa with a small saltwater pool as well as two hot tubs. In addition to facials and massages, treatments include Japanese-inspired forest bathing and Reiki led by local healer Tenney Gravatt.

Active New Yorkers will enjoy free weekly yoga, Pilates and meditation classes, dips in the outdoor swimming pool, visits to the playground with boulders and a zipline, plus miles of hiking and bike trails.

A charming on-site boutique sells plenty of pretty, pricey gardening accessories for those inspired by the farm.

The outdoors also influence the resort’s restaurant, Clay. Chef Rob Lawson (previously of Kaijin in Bangkok) brings Asian flavors and a sophisticated sensibility to his menus, studding salads with lime and ginger, and using Wildflower’s eggs to riff on the Japanese custard dish chawanmushi.

“When I told my friends I was moving here, they all said, ‘You’re crazy, you’ll miss the city,’ ” he says. “At first, it was shell shock, but then I planted seeds with our farmers, and I knew I was in the right place.”

Lawson also runs the resort’s cooking school, Maplehouse, opening Nov. 1, with classes in foraging, botanical baking (using Wildflower’s nasturtiums, thyme and rosemary), and pickling and fermenting. Visiting high-profile chefs will offer cooking lessons and special dinners, starting with Gramercy Tavern’s Michael Anthony later this fall.

In its first week, the ambitious property was running at full occupancy. On a windswept early October evening, Sorensen surveyed the guests gathered around a roaring six-foot diameter fire pit, and grinned. Ah, wilderness.