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IF THEY CLOSED the road you travel to work, you would be inconvenienced. If the pathways through the Japanese Stroll Garden in Mill Neck were closed to visitors, though, what you'd be is deprived.
There are detours to just about everywhere, but it is not so easy to substitute for a living organism like a garden. That holds especially true for the Stroll Garden, an unusual 2-acre woodland landscape whose uphill-then-downhill physical layout symbolizes the Zen road to enlightenment. On the purely horticultural plane, an outstanding collection of Asian and American plants along the footpaths will surprise even the most discerning plant person, but the walkways are a rewarding journey for those who can't tell an azalea from a fern, too. More than anything, a walk in this garden is a little bit of peace on earth, a chance to slow down.
Fortunately, for this season, the chance to travel such seductive pathways will not be lost - at least not completely. A depletion of the garden's endowment had forced the Humes Foundation, which had operated it as a public space since 1987, to shut the gates recently, but a method of reprieve has been found.
Thanks to an agreement with the Garden Conservancy, a national organization dedicated to saving...