Poetry, Garden and Art at the Hill-Stead Museum

In addition to wonderful botanic gardens, New England is rich with historic estates and their beautiful gardens. If you are traveling through Connecticut on Rte. 84, you can visit one such estate located west of Hartford - Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington. Hill-Stead offers a unique glimpse into the lifestyle of a well-to-do family at the turn of the 20th century. Set on 152 acres, the estate houses a fabulous art collection including Impressionist paintings by Mary Cassatt, Edge Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and James McNeill Whistler, as well as a print collection spanning 400 years.

Hill-Stead was the first architectural project of Theodate Pope Riddle (1867-1946), who was the fourth registered female architect in the country, an early proponent of historic preservation, and caretaker of the family art collection. She designed Hill-Stead as a country home for her parents, and the 33,000 square foot Colonial-Revival mansion was completed in 1901.

When Theodate died in 1946, her will stipulated that Hill-Stead become a museum as a memorial to her parents, and "for the benefit and enjoyment of the public." She called for the house and its contents to remain intact: not the be moved, lent or sold.

Theodate's vision for Hill-Stead was not limited to the architecture - she was equally interested in the surrounding landscape. The original gardens at Hill-Stead included an expansive Walking Garden for strolling, and a Sunken Garden designed by Beatrix Farrand.

The octagonal Sunken Garden occupies nearly an acre, and boasts a summer house, brick walkways, and a stone sundial inscribed with "Art is Long, Life is Brief" in Latin. More than 90 varieties of perennials in shades of pink, blue, purple and white accented with silvery-gray foliage mimic the color palette of the Impressionist paintings found within the mansion.

July and August are perfect for visiting Hill-Stead. The tour of the home showcases beautiful antiques, decorative arts, and of course the art collection. In addition to the gardens, Hill Stead's three miles of walking trails feature a pond habits, meadows. lowland, and forests, and are a nature enthusiast's and bird watcher's paradise. The museum also hosts an annual poetry festival with five nationally acclaimed poets, poetry writing workshops, and musical entertainment. For more information, visit hillstead.org

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Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum

Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum is a wonderful place to visit from June to September, when the exquisite rose garden is in bloom.

The three families whose names were given to the Rotch-Jones-Duff House all shared close ties to New Bedford’s dominance of the whaling industry in the 19th century. The beautiful Greek Revival mansion was built in 1834 for William Rotch Jr., one of the wealthiest and most influential citizens of New Bedford. Rotch was a Quaker who had distinguished himself by helping to found several banks and schools. He built his house on a hill overlooking the port, with room for expansive gardens on the south-facing side of the property. Rotch had a tremendous passion for horticulture, with a particular interest in the cultivation of pears, which were a popular fruit in New Bedford at that time. He created a bountiful garden of vegetables, fruits, and exotic ornamental species brought back from whaling voyages. Rotch founded the New Bedford Horticultural Society. He shared his horticultural interests with his son-in-law James Arnold who would later become benefactor of the Arnold Arboretum. (Below: William Rotch, Jr and James Arnold and family)

Edward Coffin Jones, a successful whaling agent, purchased the mansion in 1851. The Jones family expanded the garden and added the Victorian pergola situated at the main axis of the ornamental gardens. Jones’s daughter Amelia Hickling Jones lived in the house for 85 years. Photographs of the garden from the late 19th century show the pergola covered with wisteria and parterre beds edged with boxwood and filled with roses, hollyhocks, and calla lilies. Amelia became a prominent philanthropist in the community supporting the arts and founding a children’s hospital. With no heirs, the property was offered for sale when she died in 1935.

photo courtesy of rotch-jones-duff house

In 1936 the property was purchased by successful businessman and politician Mark M. Duff whose fortune was made in whale oil, coal, and oil transportation. Duff hired Mrs. John Coolidge, a Boston landscape architect, to enhance the garden with ornamental beds, reflecting pools, and graceful walkways. Duff was extremely fond of tulips, and more than 7,000 bulbs were planted during the Duff tenure, which concluded in 1981.

Today elements of all three residencies remain. A massive copper beech, planted by Amelia Jones in the 1880s, greets you at the front entrance of the mansion. On the left side of the house, stone steps descend to the formal boxwood rose parterre garden, the star of the property. The best view is from the porch of the house, where you can clearly see the pattern. The 19th-century wooden lattice pergola punctuates the garden, and its intricate lattice work casts lovely shadow patterns on the ground below. An heirloom apple orchard is sited nearby.

The Garden Club of Buzzards Bay has been involved in restoring these and other gardens on the property since 1982.  In the southeast corner, the club has created the kind of naturalistic woodland garden that might have existed on the site in the late 19th and early 20th centuries while referencing modern horticultural and environmental practices. Here you will find trilliums, Tiarella, trout lilies, and Solomon’s seal in early spring. The club also operates the historic greenhouse and maintains an adjacent historic collection of about 50 boxwood specimens.

Rotch-Jones-Duff House & Garden Museum, 396 County St., New Bedford, MA 02740
508-997-1401, rjdmuseum.org
Hours: May–Oct.: Wed.–Sat. 10–4, Sun. 12–4.

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Spring in New England's Garden in the Woods

bloodroot

April is the perfect time to visit Garden in the Woods, New England’s living museum of rare and common native plants. It is also the home of the Native Plant Trust, whose mission is to conserve and promote the region’s native plants, and encourage both home and professional gardeners to choose natives when they plant outdoor spaces. 

great white trillium

trillium cuneatum

Garden in the Woods began in 1931 when Will C. Curtis, a self-trained botanist and landscape architecture graduate of Cornell University, purchased 30 acres in north Framingham. He began clearing, planting, and sharing his garden with others. When he opened the garden to the public in 1934, Curtis wrote: “I am bringing together all the Wild Flowers and Ferns hardy in this latitude and establishing them in natural environments where they can easily be reached and enjoyed by the interested public.”

As he entered his 80s, Curtis became concerned about the future of his garden in the midst of a busy city. In an agreement with the New England Wild Flower Society, he pledged to donate the garden if an endowment of $250,000 could be raised. Wild flower hobbyists from every state and Canada, along with 450 different garden clubs, conservation groups, foundations and businesses, heeded the call. On Curtis’s 82nd birthday in 1965, the deed was transferred to the Society. With the land came Curtis’ collection of nearly 2,000 native plant species. Within a few years, the Society moved from its Boston headquarters to the garden, added a nature center, and purchased 15 acres of adjoining land as a buffer from surrounding housing developments.

rue anemone

Erythronium, scilla and bleeding hearts

Today the Garden is the largest landscaped collection of wildflowers in New England, containing over 1,700 kinds of plants representing about 1,000 species, 200 of which rare and endangered. Ponds fringed by native blue irises, swamps with skunk cabbage, and a bog where carnivorous yellow pitcher plants catch flies illustrate the variety of Massachusetts habitats. Rare and common native flora create a changing tapestry of flowers and foliage throughout the seasons.

Mayapples unfurling their leaves

canadian anemone

The best time to visit Garden in the Woods is in the spring, when the blooms of trout lilies, squirrel corn, Virginia bluebells, pink lady’s slipper orchids, Canada violets, blue woodland phlox, twinleaf, and Jack-in-the-pulpits cover the forest floor. In late spring, rhododendrons and azaleas burst into bloom, followed by clethra and the legendary franklinia in summer. Curtis was a fan of white flowers, and you see them everywhere: white varieties of wild geranium, bluebells, Virginia rose, great lobelia and cardinal flower. Partridgeberry and red baneberry, which normally produce red fruit, here produce white.

marsh marigold

Since the gardens are planted with natives and maintained organically, they attract a multitude of butterflies, honeybees, and other insect pollinators, as well as frogs, turtles, black snakes, dragonflies, and birds.

painted turtles bask on a log

Although the plantings look spontaneous, most of the plants were raised from seeds cultivated at the Society’s Nasami Farm nursery and meticulously placed in the landscape. A wide selection of native plants is available for sale at the gift shop. You can also purchase plants at Nasami Farm from April to early October; Saturday and Sundays, 10-5, and weekdays by appointment. 128 North St., Whately, MA, (413) 397-9922.

Other gardens dedicated to native plants include Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve in New Hope, PA, and Mount Cuba in Wilmington, DE. New York Botanic Garden and Stonecrop in New York, Jenkins Arboretum in PA and Leonard J Buck garden in Far Hills, NJ also have many natives. Other native plant nurseries include Native Landscapes in Pawling, NY, and Earth Tones Native Plants in Woodbury, CT.

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Resplendent Dahlias on Enders Island

Looking for a wonderful daytrip? Enders Island is a beautiful 11-acre sanctuary off the coast of Mystic, Connecticut, and the site of St. Edmund’s Retreat, a Catholic Retreat Center. Accessible by a short causeway, the island provides an atmosphere of serenity and spirituality with its lovely gardens, seascapes and seaside Chapel.

The island was once the home of Dr. Thomas and Alys Enders, who gifted it to the Society of St. Edmund, a Catholic community of priests and brothers in 1954. It has since grown to serve a ministry of hope and healing, providing spiritual retreats, an institute of sacred art, and a ministry to people in recovery.

The gardens began in the early 1900s when the Enders transformed the barren island into their home. They built an Arts and Crafts stone house and began extensive landscape renovations. When the 1938 New England Hurricane devastated the island, the Enders commissioned the construction of the seawall that still protects the island today.

Restoration work on the gardens began in 1993. Fr. Thomas F. X. Hoar, SSE, recruited friends from throughout New England to help clean up and restore the landscape, which had become choked with weeds. In 2007, dahlia enthusiast Gayle Wentworth began attending mass on Enders Island. At the time, there were few gardens on the property, but Gayle saw the land’s potential. With a gift of tubers that were planted in two garden plots, the dahlia gardens were established.

Since then, the garden has grown to almost four acres in size, with 24 plots of dahlias. Gayle, now known as the “Dahlia Lady” continues to share her many gifts and talents, contributes dahlias from her own gardens, and obtains tubers from other growers and hybridizers. In 2021 an heirloom dahlia garden was established with contributions from heirloom growers. There are currently more than 2,000 dahilias of 400 varieties in the gardens. Peak blooming season spans mid-August to mid-September, when 90 percent of the flowers are in bloom. Many dahlias continue to dazzle until frost in mid-October.

In addition to the dahlia gardens, a rose garden with 80 rose bushes provides a lovely floral display outside the Our Lady of Assumption Chapel. Grapes, apples, peaches, pears, and peppers also flourish in the Island’s soil, later appearing in a variety of pies and jams crafted annually by staff and volunteers. Nestled into a natural rock amphitheater, the Garden of Two Hearts is a memorial to lost loved ones. Stone walls and walkways frame the gardens, and statuary enhances the reverent atmosphere.

Enders Island is located off of Mystic CT. (860) 536-0565 endersisland.org

Excerpted from The Garden Tourist’s New England, second edition, available here.

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Roses by the Sea at Fuller Gardens

Roses are the main event at Fuller Gardens. Now a test garden for the American Rose Society, it showcases more than 1,200 rose bushes. The 125 varieties have staggered bloom times, so there is color from June until October.

Fuller Gardens began as Runnymede-by-the-Sea, the summer estate of Bostonians Alvan and Viola Fuller. Alvan was a self-made businessman, art collector, philanthropist, and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts in the 1920s. The original landscape was designed by Arthur A. Shurtleff, but the garden evolved and was enlarged over the years, with the help of the Olmsted Brothers firm of Boston. The front garden was designed as the estate’s showpiece in 1938. It was meant to be appreciated from the street and utilized a “false perspective,” in which the back of the garden is narrower than the front, making the space appear longer than it actually is.

The Fullers rarely frequented the garden themselves, but they enjoyed viewing it from the upstairs bedroom windows and welcomed the public. The front garden was planted with hundreds of roses in formal parterre beds, and surrounded by hedges and flower borders filled with coneflowers, astilbe, salvias, baptisia, and geraniums. Statuary and tuteurs draped with clematis punctuated the hedges.

In addition to the front garden, you will find a second rose garden that is laid out in a circular pattern surrounding a central antique wellhead. It is enclosed by a privet hedge and a cedar fence upon which are trained espaliered apple trees. Perennial borders flank the beds of roses.

A shady Japanese garden provides a quiet sanctuary, with paths leading through hostas, ferns, azaleas, mountain laurel, and rhododendrons surrounding a pool filled with giant koi.

Near the remaining carriage house, a glass conservatory houses tropical plants, begonias, and vines. A large display bed of dahlias provides stunning color in late summer.

The gardens are meticulously maintained by a knowledgeable staff headed by director Jamie Colen. The roses are protected from harsh winter temperatures with buckets of soil heaped upon their crowns in early December. Instead of using mulch to suppress weeds, the staff weed the beds twice a week and pay careful attention to soil quality, amending it regularly with compost and lime. As a result, the roses are healthy and vigorous, with few pests and almost no diseases, so chemical treatments are unnecessary. As they age and need to be replaced, new roses are purchased from Roseland Nurseries in Acushnet, Massachusetts. The colorful gardens continue to delight the public as they did almost 100 years ago, and the Fullers are probably happily watching from above.

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Beauport: An Eclectic Seaside Getaway

If you are interested in interior design, architecture, historic homes, and antiques as well as gardens, you will thoroughly enjoy Beauport. Beauport was the summer home of Henry Davis Sleeper, one of the country’s first professional interior designers. Perched in a dramatic setting on Gloucester’s Eastern Point, Beauport showcases Sleeper’s unique vision and artistic talent in 40 beautifully preserved rooms and a small lush garden.

Eastern Point was developed as a wealthy summer enclave in the early 1900s. Sleeper came from a prominent Boston family and was introduced to the area in 1906. He was “clearly besotted” by the site’s natural beauty, purchased a waterfront lot, and began constructing his esoteric residence. The home looks like it belongs in a fairy tale, with a blend of Gothic, medieval, early Colonial, and Arts and Crafts architecture. Built of stone and wood, it features steeply pitched roofs, round towers, a belfry, ornate chimneys, and diamond-paned leaded-glass windows.

The interior is a warren of eclectic rooms connected by alcoves and stairways and packed with more than 10,000 furnishings, salvaged architectural details, and decorative objects. Each room has its own theme based on literature, a historical event, or a collection.

You will see a Jacobean-style dining room that feels like an English pub; a colonial-era kitchen; a marine master parlor overlooking Gloucester Harbor; a two-story, balconied book tower; and the “China Trade” room, with its pagoda-inspired balcony and 1780s hand-printed Chinese wallpaper.

Beauport was both a home and a professional showcase and led to a successful interior design career that included clients such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry Francis du Pont, and Hollywood celebrities. After Sleeper passed away, the mansion was purchased in 1935 by Helena Woolworth McCann who preserved it mostly unchanged. Her heirs donated it to Historic New England in 1942.

Like the house, the garden evolved over several decades and is characteristic of an Arts and Crafts design. It is divided into several formal outdoor rooms and intimate spaces accented with sundials and classical statuary. The entry garden’s boxwood hedge and gravel paths enclose a small cottage garden of lush perennials. Brick patios and flower-edged terraces at the back of the house overlook the harbor. Further from the house, the materials change to rough stone, flowing lines adapt to the natural contours of the site, and plantings feature native shrubs and perennials and Pennsylvania sedge lawns. The garden was restored in 2012 to its 1920s appearance.

75 Eastern Point Blvd., Gloucester, MA 01930, (978) 283-0800, historicnewengland.org/property/beauport-sleeper-mccann-house

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Sweet Auburn: America’s First Garden Cemete

Photo: Mt. Auburn Cemetery

Located four miles outside of Boston, Mount Auburn was America’s first designed rural cemetery. It also gave rise to the American park movement and became an eminent horticultural institution. Today, it is beloved by nature, landscape and history buffs, and is an excellent destination to explore in autumn.

In the early 19th century, Dr. Jacob Bigelow (left), a Boston physician and Harvard professor, became concerned that crowded cemeteries in congested urban areas might promote the spread of contagious diseases. At that time, most city residents were buried in churchyards or vaults below churches, and as the population of Boston grew, these options became untenable. Dr. Bigelow developed the vision of a burial place located on the outskirts of the city, with family burial lots sited in a landscaped setting filled with trees, shrubs, and flowers. In 1831, the newly formed Massachusetts Horticultural Society agreed to take a lead role in developing the first rural cemetery. They found a 72-acre farm in Watertown and Cambridge that was ideal and featured a 125-foot central mount that provided spectacular views of Boston and Cambridge.

Henry A.S. Dearborn (above right), President of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, was largely responsible for the cemetery’s design. He incorporated ideas from the English picturesque landscape style and the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris into his plan for Mount Auburn. The picturesque style celebrated nature and embraced the topography and unique physical characteristics of a site. It also incorporated architectural elements such as castles, rustic cottages, and Gothic ruins into its design, which was particularly suited to a cemetery with its statuary and mausoleums.  Dearborn partnered with civil engineer Alexander Wardworth in laying out winding roads that followed the natural contours of the land, and retaining naturalistic elements such as wooded areas and ponds. He also established a separate experimental garden at Mount Auburn, planted with many domestic and exotic varieties of fruits, flowers, and vegetables. As news of the garden cemetery spread, horticulturalists from around the world sent gifts of seeds. 

The popularity of the new cemetery grew, and lots sold quickly. It was open to all races and religions, and became a popular choice for Boston’s African Americans in the 19thcentury. It also became the final resting place for such prominent Bostonians as Mary Baker Eddy, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Winslow Homer, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. In 1835 the cemetery became a private nonprofit corporation, ended its partnership with the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, and the experimental garden was discontinued. 

By the mid-1800s, the site was internationally renowned as a horticultural attraction and pleasure ground, with picturesque landscapes, winding paths, a variety of horticulture, and sculptural art. Its success inspired the designs of other cemeteries, and launched the American parks movement. Today, the cemetery still upholds Bigelow’s natural, oasis-like vision, and has grown to 175 acres. The cemetery is planted with more than 5,000 trees spanning 600 varieties. They include Japanese umbrella pines, yellowwoods, amur cork trees, plane trees, weeping cherries, sweetgum, and weeping pagoda trees. Mount Auburn has become a world-renowned ornamental horticultural landscape, a National Historic Landmark, and a leader in historic landscape preservation and ecologically sustainable landscaping. Sweet Auburn, as it came to be called, continues to function as an active cemetery and a pastoral landscape that is visited each year by more than 200,000 people from around the world.

Mount Auburn Cemetery is open daily 8 am–7 pm at 580 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge, MA 02138, (617) 547-7105, mountauburn.org.

An excerpt from The Garden Tourist’s New England.

Two books explore the history and wildlife of the cemetery. The Lively Place by Stephen Kendrick, tells the history of the cemetery:

“When Mount Auburn Cemetery was founded, in 1831, it revolutionized the way Americans mourned the dead by offering a peaceful space for contemplation. This cemetery, located not far from Harvard University, was also a place that reflected and instilled an imperative to preserve and protect nature in a rapidly industrializing culture—lessons that would influence the creation of Central Park, the cemetery at Gettysburg, and the National Parks system. Even today this urban wildlife habitat and nationally recognized hotspot for migratory songbirds continues to connect visitors with nature and serves as a model for sustainable landscape practices. Beyond Mount Auburn’s prescient focus on conservation, it also reflects the impact of Transcendentalism and the progressive spirit in American life seen in advances in science, art, and religion and in social reform movements. In The Lively Place, Stephen Kendrick celebrates this vital piece of our nation’s history, as he tells the story of Mount Auburn’s founding, its legacy, and the many influential Americans interred there, from religious leaders to abolitionists, poets, and reformers.”

Dead in Good Company is a collection of of essays, poems and wildlife photographs of Mount Auburn Cemetery edited by John Harrison and Kim Nagy.

“An amazing group of authors have come together to celebrate this unique resource - including Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz; historical novelist William Martin; former Mayor of Boston and Ambassador to the Vatican, Ray Flynn; Boston author and television icon, Hank Phillippi Ryan; Pulitzer Prize winner, Megan Marshall; mystery/true-crime author Kate Flora; mystery author Katherine Hall Page; medical thriller author Gary Goshgarian (Braver); broadcasting legend Upton Bell; world renowned bird guide author and artist David Sibley; drama critic, author and host of the Theatre World Awards, Peter Filichia; screen writer, author Chris Keane; Mass Audubon's Wayne Petersen; Talkin' Birds radio host, Ray Brown; author, naturalist Peter Alden; founder of Project Coyote, Camilla Fox; Director of the World Bird Sanctuary, Jeff Meshach; senior scientist for wildlife at the Humane Society of the United States, John Hadidian; historian Dee Morris; and sports writer and commentator, Dan Shaughnessy.”

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Three Sisters Sanctuary: A Healing Garden

A two-story tin man with a bright red heart greets you at the entrance of the Three Sisters Sanctuary. The sanctuary is a sculpture garden and art installation, but most importantly, it is a healing garden. When Richard M. Richardson visited Goshen more than 40 years ago, he felt drawn to the area. He began building the healing garden 25 years ago after the tragic death of his older brother, followed 10 years later by the death of his eldest daughter. He says that he did not find the garden, but the garden found him and shaped him into the environmental artist that he is today. It filled a void in his life with purpose and meaning. 

As you enter the sanctuary, you will see Richard’s house–another art installation– on the right. Inspired by a lifelong love of gypsy wagons that he saw on visits to Ireland, the house is clad in zigzag and diamond-shaped shingles painted in two shades of orange. A path leads to a firepit and a pond with a waterfall that is guarded by a life-size mermaid. Adjacent to this is the outdoor dining area, covered in climbing vines. As you make your way through the garden, you will see both whimsical and thought-provoking sculptures from a handful of local artists beautifully incorporated into the setting. The Tina Marie Sanctuary with its iron orbs is a tribute to Richard’s oldest daughter. An eagle sculpture by John Bander crafted from cutlery hangs suspended from a birch tree near a peaceful clearing. A huge stone amphitheater provides a setting for restorative yoga and concerts. A pathway lined with art glass takes you past the wetland and offers lovely nature scenes.

Photo courtesy of wgby

The central part of the garden is the Life Labyrinth, a series of connected spaces outlined by huge Goshen stones and fastigiate (narrow, upright) arborvitae. The labyrinth takes you on life’s journey, beginning with an area called “Dancing with the Ladies” on to “Courtship,” “Seduction,” “Commitment,” and through several other life stages until you arrive at the “Exit of Life.” It ends in the Butterfly Garden, where a group of “children” sculpted from wire by artist Michael Melle twirls around a maypole. Continuing past the Grounded Treehouse and the Faerie House, you finally reach the Mosaic Dragon Den, a space elaborately decorated with colored glass, metal objects, toys, and collectibles. Encircled by the stone body and tail of the dragon, the interior of the den offers a space for contemplation and remembrance of loved ones. If Richard is in the garden, he may ignite the dragon so that you can see the richly decorated head breathing fire. 

Richard’s latest project has been the construction of a massive three-section labyrinth adjacent to the scenic wetland. Many years in the planning, the labyrinth has evolved into a second dragon, this one more than 200 feet long and consisting of three adjoining spirals. Still under construction, the labyrinth promises to be an outstanding addition to the sanctuary.

Three Sisters Sanctuary is a perfect garden destination in September. It is located at 188 Cape St., Goshen, MA, and open daily 8 am to dusk. Admission is $10. threesisterssanctuary.com

Excerpted from The Garden Tourist’s New England, published in 2020.

McLaughlin Garden & Homestead: A Maine Gardener's Legacy

PHOTO BY MARTHA EMERSON

Nestled between gas stations and strip malls, the McLaughlin Garden and Homestead has been a peaceful retreat and beloved garden for decades. It began as the private home of Bernard McLaughlin, a 38-year-old army veteran who spent winters in Florida as a hotel cook and summers growing potatoes with his father in Maine. When he bought the 100-year-old farmstead with its huge barn and massive stone walls in 1936, McLaughlin set about creating an ornamental garden.

PHOTO BY MARTHA EMERSON

McLaughlin was a self-taught gardener with no formal horticultural training. He began with a bare, unproductive pasture, and over the decades he transformed it into a lush garden with mature trees, wildflower borders, and shrub collections. He read voraciously, joined plant societies, and befriended other gardeners. Mostly he learned by tending the garden single-handedly for almost 60 years. Lilacs were one of McLaughlin’s favorite plants, and he planted 200 lilac bushes of 125 varieties in his garden. He added specimen trees and underplanted them with hostas, coral bells, lily of the valley, columbines, and ferns. Over the years, many of them naturalized to form breathtaking swaths. In sunny areas he created beds of daylilies, irises, and phlox, and he planted a border of Maine wildflowers and ferns along an old shady lane behind the barn.

LADY’S SLIPPERS, PULMONARIA AND WOODLAND PHLOX—PHOTO BY MARTHA EMERSON

“DEAN OF MAINE GARDENS” MCLAUGHLIN

DODECATHEON (SHOOTING STAR) IN THE WILDFLOWER WALK—PHOTO BY MARTHA EMERSON

McLaughlin’s generosity was legendary. Whenever his garden gate was open (which was almost always), the garden was open to visitors—neighbors, friends, and strangers. He loved to talk and teach others about gardening and earned the nickname “Dean of Maine Gardeners.” He was a plant collector who loved to share his plants with other gardeners and received many back in return. A member of the Maine Iris Society, he befriended hybridizer Currier McEwen, who named a Siberian iris with large ruffled white flowers in his honor. 

iris Siberia ‘Bernard McLaughlin’

TRILLIUMS AND BLEEDING HEARTS—PHOTO BY MARTHA EMERSON

 When McLaughlin died at the age of 98 in 1995, the community was amazed to find that no plans had been made to preserve the garden. A group of local residents formed the nonprofit McLaughlin Foundation and raised funds to purchase the property in 1997. With the help of volunteers, the foundation has been restoring and enhancing the garden and keeping it open to the public free of charge. Two of the best times to visit the garden are in early May when the spring ephemerals bloom–trilliums, bloodroot, mayapples, Uvularia, and primroses—and late May when the lilac collection is at its peak. Please check the garden’s website for an opening date for 2020.

PHOTO BY MARTHA EMERSON

PHOTO BY MARTHA EMERSON

McLaughlin Garden & Homestead, 97 Main St., South Paris, ME 04281, (207) 743-8820, mclaughlingarden.org

Please check website for opening days and hours. Admission is free.

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Tulipmania in Rhode Island

In the 17th century, tulip mania swept through Europe. Now it is sweeping through New England with the establishment of the first u-pick tulip farm in Exeter, Rhode Island. With seemingly endless fields of colorful tulips, Wicked Tulips has brought a slice of Holland to New England. But here you get to take home some of the beautiful flowers, and that has people coming in droves.

Photo courtesy of Wicked Tulips

Keriann and Jeroen Koeman moved to Rhode Island and founded Wicked Tulips in 2015. Their first “green” business was selling organically grown flower bulbs in Virginia. This was a fairly novel and challenging concept for a commercial bulb nursery but important to conservationist Keriann. Jeroen grew up on his family’s 150-acre tulip farm in Holland, where the name Koeman is synonymous with tulips. Virgina turned out to be too hot for tulip growing, so the couple looked north and were attracted to Rhode Island. They planted their first u-pick fields at Snake Den Farm, and found the climate to be perfect for tulips—cold in the winter and hot in the summer, which is similar to the climate of Central Asia where tulips are native.

The u-pick tulip concept was an instant hit, with 17,000 visitors storming the farm over three weeks in the first season.

Pickers of all ages, from small children to seniors in wheelchairs, meandered through the rows with buckets in hand, admiring and selecting their flowers. From the fields they made their way to the wrapping station, where their tulips were carefully wrapped in brown paper for the journey home.

Since 2015 the Koemans have tripled the size of their gardens and now grow more than 800,000 tulip bulbs of 100 different varieties. Their farm includes an early and late field as well as a display garden with 5,000 unusual tulips. Tickets must be purchased in advance, and each ticket includes 10 free tulips. Visitors should check the farm’s website or Facebook page to get the exact dates of the picking season and for a daily “Bloom Report” that indicates which varieties are in bloom. Wicked Tulips also sells tulip bulbs for fall planting.

Note new location: Schartner Farms, 1 Arnold Place Exeter, RI

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Newport's Blue Garden

The most coveted invitation of the 1913 Newport summer season was for the Masque of the Blue Garden, an inaugural soiree for the magnificent garden created for Arthur Curtiss James and his wife, Harriet Parsons James.

Three hundred guests were greeted by Harriet James, who was clad in a blue 16th-century Italian gown embroidered with sapphires and amethysts and crowned with an ornate diamond-studded headdress. After an Italianate pageant staged by professional entertainers, a trumpeter led guests into the James mansion for dinner and dancing.

Arthur Curtiss James made his fortune in copper and the railroads. A private man and one of America’s least-known millionaires, he was happiest sailing his yacht on the sea. Harriet was a vivacious socialite who enjoyed entertaining, fine homes, and beautiful gardens.

When the Jameses built their Newport mansion, Harriet hired Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. to design a secret garden in a monochromatic color palette of blue. Flowers in ethereal shades of sapphire, azure, periwinkle, purple, violet, lavender, gray, and white reflected the sky and surrounding ocean. To keep the garden looking fresh from spring through fall, the beds were replanted several times each year by a staff of 40 gardeners. With its graceful design and signature color scheme, the Blue Garden became a Newport showplace and the site of lavish parties and garden tours. 

After both Jameses died in 1941, maintenance of the Blue Garden suffered. In 1967, the mansion was devastated by fire and demolished, and the property was subdivided into house lots and sold. The once-glorious Blue Garden disappeared under a thick covering of invasive trees and vines.

In 2012 philanthropist, preservationist, and horticulturist Dorrance Hamilton funded the restoration of the garden. Hamilton was an important member of Newport society, a benefactor of Blithewold and the Philadelphia and Newport Flower Shows, and a neighbor of the Blue Garden.

Completed in 2015, the renovation of the Blue Garden reflects Olmsted’s design intent but utilizes a 21st-century plant palette that allows for simplified maintenance.

Enclosed by low walls, trellises, and a columned pergola, the Blue Garden is classical in layout with a cruciform shape. A long reflecting pool, lined with Persian-inspired blue tiles and fine spray jets, is connected with a runnel to a square lily pond.

Boxwood, Caryopteris, and ‘Twist-n-Shout’ lacecap hydrangeas provide structure, while beds of mixed perennials, annuals, and bulbs create a long season of bloom. You will find perennial salvias, balloon flowers, phlox, monkshood, asters, false indigo, and delphiniums augmented with annual bachelor buttons, lantanas, morning glories, plumbago, lobelias, and agapanthus. Cobalt blue ceramic pots accent the plantings. The Blue Garden is once again a showplace in Newport thanks to the creativity and dedication of two amazing women.

Excerpted from The Garden Tourist’s New England by Jana Milbocker.

The Blue Garden, Newport, RI 02919, thebluegarden.org

Hours: June 13–Oct.10: 11 am & 2 pm, by appointment only. Admission: $15, online tickets required

Mytoi: A Serene Island Garden

There are few Japanese gardens in New England, so it is unusual to find one gracing the tiny island of Chappaquiddick for almost 70 years. In 1954 Mary Wakeman purchased land in Chappaquiddick for a summer home, and hired Edgartown architect Hugh Jones to design her a Japanese-style house. As payment, she sold him a 3-acre parcel across the road from her house for $1.

Jones had developed a love of Japanese gardens during his military service. He began his own Japanese-style garden by scooping out a pond in the midst of the pitch pine forest, and building a little red bridge. He planted rhododendrons, azaleas and junipers. He did all of the landscaping and planting himself, and spent so much time on his garden that he referred to it as his "toy." He named the garden "my toy," which he spelled “M-Y-T-O-I” as we see it today.

When Jones died in 1965, his heirs sold the property back to Wakeman, who managed the garden and provided free access to the public. She donated the garden along with an endowment and an additional 11 acres of land to the Trustees in 1976.

When Hurricane Bob descended on Chappaquiddick in 1991, it decimated more than 70% of the plantings. Only a few of the original pitch pines, azaleas and rhododendrons survived the onslaught. The Trustees hired the team of Don Sibley and Julie Moir Messervy to develop and implement a reconstruction plan. Sibley is an artist with a strong interest in Japanese culture and gardening practices. Messervy is a renowned landscape designer who studied in Japan and was the first Western woman to be apprenticed to a Japanese master gardener.

Stewartia blossom in July

The new Mytoi garden is divided into Japanese-inspired garden rooms, with Asian plants and traditional Japanese garden elements. The entry gate is modeled after one you would find at a Japanese temple, but crafted from local black locust trees. As you stroll through the garden, you find azaleas and rhododendrons from the original garden, complemented by new birch alles, Stewartias, threadleaf maples, mountain laurels, camellias, and paths lined with Japanese primroses.

The pond is still there, but with a new zigzag-shaped bridge bordered by winterberry and beach plum. On a hill opposite the pond, a path leads to the azumaya, or traditional shelter where one would wait before entering a teahouse. A second hill topped with a bench provides a serene view of the water. The pond is stocked with koi, but due to local otters and osprey, the fish supply has to be supplemented with fresh donations every year. Mytoi invites you to slow down, to appreciate the nuances of Japanese design, and to contemplate the beauty of nature.

Hours: Daily dawn to dusk, admission $3

Mytoi, 41 Dike Rd., Edgartown, MA 02539, (508) 627-7689

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Osborne Homestead Museum: The Home and Garden of an Extraordinary Woma

By today’s standards, Frances Osborne Kellogg was an extraordinary woman. By the standards of the late 1800s, she was a force of nature—a successful industrialist, cattle breeder, philanthropist, and conservationist. When her father died in 1907 and the probate judge suggested that his companies be sold so that the family could live off the profits and Frances could go to college, the 31-year old young heiress replied, “Sell them? No. I intend to run them.”

A gifted violinist from an early age, Frances was expected to study music in college. She loved attending opera, theater and musical concerts in New York City. But an accident with a sewing needle damaged her eyesight, and Frances’ life took a different direction. Her father had taught her how to run the family business, and Frances took on the unusual challenge as a woman CEO of four different companies. All of them prospered under her leadership.

When she married New York architect Waldo Stewart Kellogg in 1919, the couple’s focus became the family dairy. The Kelloggs developed a reputation for their selective cattle-breeding program. As the family fortune grew, Frances invested in her community, supporting local organizations and building the Derby Neck Library.

Derby Neck Library

Waldo enlarged and remodeled the house in the Colonial Revival style in the 1920s, and Frances added the ornamental gardens. She had a deep love of flowers from childhood, and enjoyed attending annual flower shows in New York City. In 1910 she hired Yale architect Henry Killam Murphy to design her formal flower garden, and employed Robert Barton from Kew Gardens as her head gardener. 

French doors lead from the house and conservatory to this lovely garden, which is also visible from the street. The garden is bisected by a white trellis fence accented with red roses, purple clematis, and yellow honeysuckle. A central arbor provides benches where you can sit and enjoy the beauty and scents of the flowers. One half of the garden is dedicated to Frances’s favorite flower, the rose. Four rectangular rose beds are enclosed by long borders of old-fashioned favorites such as foxgloves, irises, goats beard, and salvias. The other half of the garden is a formal perennial garden of bearded iris, peonies, daylilies and sedums. Four beds of standard roses, weigela and boxwood surround a circular bed accentuated with a sundial.

The garden is bordered on one side by a long stone wall, with steps that lead to beds of lilacs and other ornamental shrubs and trees. On the slope above the formal gardens, a rock garden has been created with conifers, ferns and perennials. Peak time to see the garden is mid May to mid June.

Frances’ love of gardening and nature continued throughout her lifetime. She was an active member of local garden societies, and became a sponsor of the Connecticut College Arboretum. As her interest in conservation grew, she became the first female vice chair of the Conn. Forest and Park Association. Frances lived in the family home until her death in 1956. Before she died, she deeded her entire estate to the State of Connecticut, including 350 acres for Osborndale State Park.

In addition to the garden, you can tour the restored historic home with its collection of original furnishings, antiques, ceramics, artwork and personal mementos. Frances’ doll still rests on her childhood bed and the opera cape that she wore to performances at the Met is draped over a settee.

Osborne Homestead Museum, 500 Hawthorne Ave., Derby, CT 06418, (203) 734-2513
Hours: May 5–Oct. 28: Thurs.–Fri. 10–3, Sat. 10–4, Sun. 12–4

Chesterwood: A Sculptor's Garden

A visit to the Berkshires is not complete without a tour of Chesterwood,  the home, garden and studio of Daniel Chester French. 

“I hope you will come to ‘Chesterwood’ and rest. It is as beautiful as fairy-land here now, the hemlocks are decorating themselves with their light-green tassels and the laurel is beginning to blossom and the peonies are a glory in the garden. I go about in an ecstasy of delight over the loveliness of things.”

—Daniel Chester French, 1911

One of the most successful sculptors of the twentieth century, French was best known for his statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. French purchased the 150-acre property in the Berkshires in 1896 for a summer estate and studio. He had already achieved national prominence for his bronze Minute Man statue, which resides at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. At Chesterwood he collaborated with his friend Henry Bacon on the construction of a residence and what would become his primary studio space for the rest of his career. The Colonial Revival house with its long veranda was sited to take advantage of the views of Monument Mountain and Mount Everett.

For thirty-five years, the French family spent their winters in New York and their summers at Chesterwood. Family and friends visited the Berkshire retreat all season long, participating in dinner parties, dances, and tennis games. Mary French kept a detailed recipe book to organize her entertaining. 

The main garden area is adjacent to the studio. French would often end a day of sculpting with a couple of hours tending the perennial and vegetable gardens, and taking long walks in the woods. A semicircular graveled courtyard is furnished with decorative planters and a pair of curved marble benches called exedras. Bacon designed the central marble-cement fountain for which French created putti relief.

From the courtyard, marble steps lead to an elevated lawn with a central walk of peonies and Hydrangea paniculata standards. The main axis of the garden features a long perennial border planted with pastel-colored flowers. At its end, a pair of white-glazed terracotta columns mark the beginning of a woodland walk. The garden is enclosed by a lilac hedge and hemlocks, and accessorized with a pergola, marble benches, statuary, and a small square pool of water hyacinths and water lilies.

Chesterwood opened to the public in 1955, and in 1962 French’s nephew, landscape architect Prentiss French, designed a new circulation pattern to better accommodate visitors. Today, Chesterwood is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and French's house, garden and studio are open for touring.

The grounds are also used as exhibition space for contemporary sculpture as well as works by French. The studio, barn, and other gallery spaces include sculptural studies for a number of his works, including The Minute Man, The Continents, and Abraham Lincoln. 

Chesterwood is open from Memorial Day to Columbus Day, daily 10 am to 5 pm. Admission is $18. The grounds are 15 acres in size. There are picnic tables, trails for woodland walks, an annual outdoor contemporary sculpture exhibition, and a permanent exhibition of Daniel Chester French's work.

4 Williamsville Rd., Stockbridge, MA 02162, (413) 298-3579, chesterwood.org

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Come in From the Cold at the Roger Williams Botanical Center

If you are looking to come in from the cold in January, New England features several lovely indoor gardens (see related article). One of the newest is in Providence, in a park that has provided leisure, entertainment and education for residents and visitors for almost 150 years.

Roger Williams Park was created in 1870 after Betsey Williams bequeathed 102 acres of farmland and woodland to the city of Providence to be used for public purpose. A portion of the gift included land that was originally purchased from the Narragansetts by her great, great, great, grandfather, Rhode Island’s founder Roger Williams.

Horace Cleveland, a leader in the Urban Parks Movement, created the design for the park. It was intended to serve as an escape for residents of highly industrialized Providence in the late 19th century. Today, the Roger Williams Park contains a zoo, a museum of natural history, a planetarium, the Botanical Center,  Japanese Gardens, Victorian Rose Gardens, the Providence Police Department’s Mounted Command center, the boathouse and boat rentals, historical tours, a carousel, playground, the Temple to Music, the Roger Williams Park Casino, and many miles of walking paths.

The Botanical Center opened in 2007, and at 12,000 square feet is the largest public indoor display garden in New England. It includes two main greenhouses: The Conservatory and the Mediterranean Room. The Conservatory has the feeling of a large courtyard surrounded by elegant tall palms. Unlike most greenhouses, this one is airy and open, with a central area for ceremonies or social events. A fountain bubbles and colorful tropical plants bloom beneath stately trees. Immense birds of paradise hide among the palms, like storks in the jungle.

The Mediterranean Room is built around a long stucco wall with a circular gate. A densely planted pond with giant koi dominates the room. The Orchid Society displays delicate orchids growing in a moss-draped tree in one corner, and the Carnivorous Plant Society exhibits pitcher plants and delicate wild flowers in a raised bog garden. A small waterfall and a Mediterranean fountain provide soothing background music. All in all, there are over 150 different species and cultivars of plants including 17 types of palms. Upcoming projects include a Flavor Lab designed for chefs and farmers to compare the taste of vegetable varieties, and a Journey Through America exhibit featuring plants native to South, Central, and North America.

The Botanical Center’s outdoor display gardens are equally attractive and well worth a visit in the warmer months. The Winter Garden has gorgeous specimens of umbrella pines, a Lacebark Pine, Metasequoia, and other unusual conifers; Sargent cherries and trees with distinctive bark such river birches; hellebores, evergreen ferns, and bamboo. Other displays include a beautiful Perennial Garden, with large plantings of bee balm, balloon flower, phlox, daylilies, coneflowers, and blackeye susans. A Pine and Hosta Dell, Wooded Hillside Garden, Overlook Terrace, and Rain Garden offer interesting plantings to view. Downhill from the greenhouses, gorgeous roses and clematis cover the arches of the Rose Maze.

1000 Elmwood Ave., Providence, RI 02905, (401) 785-9450
providenceri.com/botanical-center

HOURS: Tues. –Sun. 11–4
ADMISSION: $5

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New Hampshire's Garden of Whimsical Sculptures

Photo courtesy of Bedrock Gardens

Bedrock Gardens is a 20-acre garden that Carol Stocker of the Boston Globe aptly described as a “cross between Sissinghurst and the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden.” In 1980 Bob Munger and Jill Nooney purchased this former dairy farm and began a 30-year transformation of the landscape into a collection of themed garden rooms enlivened by whimsical sculptures.

Nooney is a practicing clinical social worker, as well as an artist and graduate of the Radcliffe Institute Landscape Design program. She uses old farm equipment and repurposed metal to create a variety of abstract sculptures, arches, arbors, water features and “creatures” inspired by nature and her imagination. Munger is a retired doctor and a lifelong tinkerer. Nooney is the garden’s visionary artist and “problem maker.” He is the “problem solver,” the implementer of those visions, including beautifully patterned walkways and patios, and hydraulics for water features.

Nooney and Munger created their garden as a journey with “places to go, places to pause and rest and interesting things to see along the way.” Nearly two-dozen “points of interest,” many with humorous names, are connected by paths that wind through garden rooms, around ponds, and through woodlands.

Closest to the house, a yew hedge encloses a formal parterre planted with white flowers, with a diamond patterned bluestone path and a circular pool and fountain. The Straight and Narrow garden features a cobbled-edged path that runs between beds of native trees, shrubs, and perennials. The Swaleway’s woodland wildflowers welcome spring amidst towers of balanced stones. The Garish Garden’s playful sculptures fit in with flowers in flaming reds and oranges and trees and shrubs with bright gold foliage.

Bedrock Gardens is full of new ideas for gardeners as well as new takes on classic garden forms. The Wiggle Waggle is a wavy 200-foot long water channel, planted with lotus and water lilies. The Spiral Garden is a “twist” on a traditional maze garden, with twirling roof ventilators on spiral stands that emphasize the Fibonacci-inspired paving laid in a moss floor. Grass Acre is a “painting” of Switchgrass, Hakone Grass, and Little Blue Stem, anchored by a metal sculpture that evokes a mountain range. The Dark Woods is a grove of dead trees accented with sculptural ghosts, spiders, and other scary creatures. The Wave is a series of 26 small metal characters on pedestals backed by a tall arborvitae hedge. Several ponds and many more gardens await the visitor.

Walking through the gardens is a delightful journey. There are many places to sit and enjoy a vista or a sculpture along the way. The Japanese garden and Tea House offer quiet repose in the woods, and the two thrones at the Termi at the far end of the large pond offer a stunning view along the 900-foot axis through the garden. Nooney has designed the garden with an artist’s eye and her strategic placement of focal points and vistas takes classical garden design concepts into a contemporary setting.

Nooney and Munger want to preserve the garden for future generations and are working with Friends of Bedrock Gardens and new executive director John Forti to transition the property into a public garden.

Bedrock Gardens will close out the 2017 season with a special fundraising Fairy House and Hobbit House Festival Weekend, October 7-9, 11 am to 3 pm. Tracy Kane, award-winning Fairy Houses author, www.fairyhouses.com, will read from her books. Visitors can stroll along a Fairy and Hobbit House Trail past houses created by gardeners, artists, and children, and take time to make their own house out of natural materials provided. Chili, books, whimsical handmade creations and fairy fare will be for sale. The entire garden will be available for touring.

Bedrock Gardens, 45 High Rd., Lee, NH 03861, (603) 659-2993, bedrockgardens.org

Excerpted from The Garden Tourist, 120 Destination Gardens and Nurseries in the Northeast by Jana Milbocker

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The Magical Garden of Green Animals

Green Animals is the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States. The 7-acre estate overlooks the Narragansett Bay, and contains a whimsical garden with more than 80 topiaries sculpted from California privet, yew, and English boxwood.

This small country estate in Portsmouth was purchased in 1872 by Thomas E. Brayton, Treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Fall River, Massachusetts. It included a white clapboard summer residence, farm outbuildings, a pasture and a vegetable garden. Brayton's daughter Alice gave the estate its name because of the profusion of "green animals" created by property superintendent Joseph Carreiro.

Carreiro was hired to design and maintain the ornamental and edible gardens from 1905 to 1945. He experimented with California privet propagated in the estate greenhouse, and developed a system for training these, without the support of frames, into over-sized animal shapes. Many of the animals took almost 20 years to grow into their final size. Since the Brayton home was a summer residence, it was not a concern that privet was deciduous and sheds its leaves in the fall. His son-in-law, George Mendonca, superintendent until 1985, expanded the gardens to include more than 80 topiaries, and sculpted some from yew and boxwood.

Alice Brayton inherited the estate and made it her permanent residence. She became an avid historian and gardener herself, and bequeathed Green Animals to The Preservation Society of Newport County upon her death. Today, Green Animals remains as a rare example of an estate with formal topiaries, beautiful flower, vegetable and herb gardens, orchards and a Victorian house.

The landscape is a series of garden rooms bordered by mature conifers and magnolias. The fanciful topiaries are the stars of the garden. Favorites include teddy bears, a camel, a giraffe, an ostrich, an elephant, a unicorn, a reindeer, a dog, and a horse with his rider. They are set within lovely flower beds planted with colorful perennials and annuals. Near the house and main entrance, the topiary retains a more formal style of figurative and geometric shapes. A walkway of arched topiary leads around the house to the front porch, where you can relax on a rocking chair and enjoy a view of the bay. The topiaries are all trimmed by hand using garden shears and require weekly hand trimming. Some conservation metal supports have been discreetly positioned inside the forms to provide stability in wind and snow.

The rest of the garden is equally magical. Grape arbors, fruit beds, orchards, cutting gardens and an extensive vegetable gardens sport decorations and whimsical scarecrows that delight children.

The Brayton house museum contains a display of vintage toys including a large collection of toy soldiers and vintage dollhouses. Adults will appreciate the original Victorian family furnishings and decoration.

Ribbons for prize-winning dahlias and vegetables, dating from about 1915, line the walls of the well-curated gift shop. Green Animals Topiary Garden is a delight for gardeners of all ages!

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Roses Bloom at Elizabeth Park

June is the best time for visiting gardens that feature roses, and there's no place better in New England than Elizabeth Park in Hartford, Connecticut - the home of our country's oldest public rose garden.

The property was once called Prospect Hill, the Hartford farming estate of wealthy businessman and politician Charles Murray Pond, and his wife, Elizabeth. When he died in 1894, Charles left his entire estate to the City of Hartford for a public park in his will. The estate consisted of 90 acres and a generous fund to purchase additional land, hire a park designer, and for maintenance. He requested that the park be a botanical park and named after his wife, Elizabeth, who was an avid gardener.

Swiss-born landscape architect Theodore Wirth was hired as the park superintendent, and he worked with the firm of Frederick Law Olmstead to design this new space. Elizabeth Park reflects a combination of both schools of landscape design with European formal gardens and Olmstead's natural setting with serpentine roadways, sweeping vistas and peripheral trees.

The rose garden is the centerpiece of Elizabeth Park, 2.5 acres in size with 475 beds and over 15,000 rose bushes and arches. The arches are in full bloom in late June to early July, and are just spectacular. They only bloom once. Many of the other roses continue to bloom until the fall.

If you visit in June, be sure to see the separated Heritage Rose Garden —one of the few in the country. Also known as Old Garden Roses, Heritage Roses—Albas, Bourbons, Centifolias, Damasks, Chinas, Gallicas, Hybrid Perpetuals, Moss, Noisettes, Portlands and Teas—are extremely fragrant and bloom only in June. These roses are exhibited in raised beds that form a five-petaled rosette symbolizing a centifolia or 100-petaled rose, which is the typical form of a heritage rose.
 

I grew up just a few miles from Elizabeth Park, and have a personal connection to the rose garden. My neighbor and friend Donna Fuss became a stay-at-home mom when her children were born, and developed a passion for gardening, especially for roses. She and her husband Mike planted a small formal rose garden in a corner of their backyard, and as their passion for roses grew, added more and more rose beds throughout the yard. They started entering rose shows, judging, and co-founded the Connecticut Rose Society. Donna’s hobby evolved into a second career, and she became the consulting rosarian to Elizabeth Park Rose Garden. Knowledgeable, outgoing, generous, and funny, Donna became an ambassador for Elizabeth Park - fondly known as the “Rose Lady.” She shared her garden enthusiasm with everyone she met, and I owe some of my garden passion to Donna.

In addition to its rose gardens, Elizabeth Park has several other notable gardens. The Perennial Garden is formal in design, with a central wooden pavilion adorned with Clematis Jackmanii. Enclosed by a hedge of dwarf Japanese yew, the garden features 1,600 perennials arranged in “cool” and “warm” color beds accented by silver grey foliage.

The Tulip and Annual Garden is planted with 11,000 tulips each fall for a spectacular spring display, and features a American Flag in summer.

The Shade Garden features mixed plantings of herbs, perennials, ornamental grasses, woody shrubs, and small evergreen and deciduous trees. Several horticultural groups design, plant, and maintain gardens in the park. These specialty gardens include the herb garden, dahlia display garden and iris garden.

After touring the gardens, you can have lunch at the Pond House Cafe located withing the park. The cafe features eclectic cuisine made with fresh, local ingredients. The menu changes to reflect the seasons.

Elizabeth Park is open 365 days of the year, dawn to dusk, and is FREE to the public. There are no admission fees.

Elizabeth Park is one of the gardens profiled in The Garden Tourist, a book of 120 destination gardens and nurseries in the Northeast, which will be published in fall 2017.

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Falmouth Estate Offers Gardens and Art

If you are on the Cape this summer, I would highly recommend a visit to Highfield Hall in Falmouth, MA. Highfield Hall and Gardens is the magnificently restored 1878 estate of the Beebe family, with a dramatic history and a vibrant present-day existence. It offers something for everyone – the gardener, history buff, antique collector, art lover, theater fan and nature lover.

Highfield Hall was one of the early summer mansions built on the Cape, and is one of the few remaining examples of Stick-style Queen Anne architecture in the Northeast. It was one of two mansions built on nearly 700 acres by the James Beebe family, which gathered on the Cape for the summers and entertained in grand fashion. When the last Beebe family member died, the estate was sold and used for a variety of purposes by subsequent owners – from health resort to religious retreat to hotel. In 1949, the estate was purchased by DeWitt TerHeun, a great patron of the theater and opera, who created a theater on the grounds for college students. The theater remains the home of Falmouth’s much-loved summer stock company from Oberlin College, the College Light Opera Company.

From the late 1970s to 1994, Highfield was abandoned and suffered two decades of neglect and vandalishm. In 1994, a demolition permit was filed by the owners, which propelled a group of Falmouth citizens to organize to save the mansion. The group, now the Highfield Hall & Gardens non-profit organization, was embroiled in years of legal battles to stave off demolition. Volunteers cleared the property and secured the building from further decay and vandalism, while raising money and public awareness of the mansion’s plight. Finally, in 2000, the Town of Falmouth took Highfield Hall and 6 acres by eminent domain, and authorized the non-profit grout to renovate and operate the property. The extraordinary restoration effort that followed was made possible through donations totaling in excess of $8.5 million, almost all of which were contributed by private individuals. In 2006, the first stage of restoration was completed, and Highfield was opened to the public.

For the garden afficianado, Highfield Hall provides two formal gardens, a labyrinth, as well as walking paths through a rhododendron dell, heritage beech plantings and nearly 400 acres of woodlands. When Highfield Hall was built, there were far fewer trees on the property than there are today, since wood was the main source of building materials and heat. To design their property, the Beebes enlisted renowned landscape designer Ernest Bowditch, and later Frederick Law Olmstead. The Beebes were passionate about their plantings, and many of their favorite beech trees remain on the property.

Two formal gardens were part of the original plan. The West Garden, originally a cutting garden, supplied fresh flowers for the house all season long. Franklin Beebe was often found in this garden, tending his favorite flower, the carnation. Today, this garden is planted with shade and sun-loving perennials, from hostas to daylilies, rudbeckia, sedums and scabiosa.

The Sunken Garden was restored in 2011 according to a design by noted landscape preservationist Lucinda Brockway. Lucinda based her design on evidence of the Beebe’s original garden, but created a planting scheme that would offer more seasonal color and easier maintenance. The gardens are maintained by volunteers. The central boxwood-bordered beds bloom in shades of purple and blue in the summer with hundreds of salvias, ‘Rosane’ geraniums, and verbena bonariensis, accented with the silver foliage of artemesia, circling spiky yuccas. The outer beds feature peonies and re-blooming daylilies. The focal point of the garden is a tall whimsical tree scupture named “The Spirits of the Garden” by Alfred Glover, representing the passageways between the spiritual and the living in the garden.

When you visit Highfield Hall the summer, you will be treated to a wonderful art exhibit which is on view through September 14: “Kanreki: A 60 Year Journey. The 60th CWAJ Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Prints”. This exhibit features more than 200 contemprorary Japanese prints by established and emerging artists. The prints encompass diverse techniques from traditional woodblock to intaglio, lithography, etching, aquatint, silkscreen and more contemporary digital innovations. The show debuted in Tokyo, and Highfield Hall is its exclusive US venue.

Wakefield Estate Featured in Open Days Pr

In the effort to increase public knowledge about the importance of historic landscapes, hundreds of exceptional gardens nationwide are selected to participate in The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program. This year, the Mary M. B. Wakefield Charitable Trust has partnered with the Conservancy to organize “the Greater Boston Area Open Days” on Saturday, June 8, from 10:00am – 4:00pm. Five distinct Milton gardens will be showcased, offering visitors a diverse range of designed landscapes. 

The Wakefield Estate is the former home of Mary “Polly” Wakefield (1914-2004), a trained horticulturist, landscape designer, plant propagator and collector, and an advocate and leader on many environmental issues of her day. Her vision for the purpose of the Wakefield Estate was to “organize to re-establish the contact between the land and the people.” An active member and trustee of many garden and volunteer organizations, Polly was especially passionate about the revival of the Public Garden in Boston. As a founding member of the Friends of the Public Garden, Polly was instrumental in restoring one of Boston’s most beautiful landmarks to its original glory.

One of the strong themes in Polly’s life was her avid interest in science and nature, both observing and studying it. Polly continually augmented her knowledge, accumulating a broad understanding of arboriculture and propagation methods, ultimately leading to her development, selection and naming of eight patented dogwood cultivars, including “Greensleeves” and “Fanfare”, two of the most highly praised dogwood cultivars today. She strived to create a formal garden that defied formality and convention, tested nature’s limits and embraced whimsy and a bit of the wild. An innovator when it came to sustainable gardening methods, she deliberately “crowded” her plants, remarking that “nature prefers it this way,” adding that “it eliminates much weeding … while giving it a more natural appearance and retaining a more even degree of natural moisture.”

The Open Days program coincides with the kick-off of the Wakefield Estate’s annual “Dogwood Days” – a week-long celebration of the estate’s hundreds of flowering kousa dogwood trees. Dogwood Days, which runs from June 8–14, 10am – 4pm daily, features tours, open gardens, and a tree and plant sale including kousa dogwoods, Japanese maples, river birches, eastern red buds, paper bark maples, metasequoias, and larches. New this year is “Dogs and Dogwoods,” a day to bring your canine friend to the estate for dog-friendly events, including a fun and informal dog show.  “Dogs and Dogwoods” is scheduled for Sunday, June 9th, from 10am-4pm.  The dog show will start at 1:00pm.  Dogs must be leashed. 

The Wakefield Estate in located at 1465 Brush Hill Road in Milton. For more information visit www.wakefieldtrust.org or call 617-333-0924. To see a list of the Open Days selected gardens and directions, see The Garden Conservancy’s website: www.gardenconservancy.org.

Guest Post by Erica Max
Program Director, Mary M.B. Wakefield Charitable Trust