Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams

For New England gardeners, January and February are a single, 59-day-long morass of cold, miserable weather which we know is killing our shrubs; punctuated by the occasional thaw that we are certain is unceremoniously heaving our perennials out of the ground. We can’t wait for March to come.

This is what 30 inches of
snow looks like

But, thinking about being buried under two feet of snow by winter storm Liam, Quinn, Skylar, or Toby (which are actual names chosen for 2018 by meteorologists whose sense of humor escapes me) is just too depressing. 

Accordingly, optimistic gardeners place seed orders and tend their houseplants.  However, I’m not allowed to place seed orders.  I always go straight for the most whimsically named vegetables (think ‘Lettuce Entertain You’ and ‘Beets Me’), even if they’re 180 days to maturity in a climate where 150 days is stretching the boundary of common sense.  I also fail to read the fine print (“One plant will produce enough zucchini to feed Latvia for a year, although our taste panel agrees it has both the aroma and texture of well-worn gym socks...”).  

I’m also off the houseplant watering detail ever since a minor mishap with a fern that resulted in three inches of water in our basement a few years back.  The less said about this unfortunate event, the better.

The Scott Arboretum encompasses
pretty much the entirety of the
Swarthmore College campus

So, instead of having responsibility for actual plants and such, Betty gives me the task of planning warmer-weather, horticulture-centric travel.  For example, I need to be in Philadelphia in the latter part of May.  I’ve already added two days to that trip to get re-acquainted with Longwood, Chanticleer, Winterthur, and the Scott Arboretum after a too-long absence. 

The Beatrix Farrand garden in Maine.
It's on our to-do list for 2018.

To me, ‘big’ gardens are more than just spectacles; they also contain educational elements for those of us who don’t have hundred-acre estates.  The Scott Arboretum (essentially, the entire campus of Swarthmore College) is a practical demonstration of how to combine ecology, horticulture, and botany into a home landscape.  The fact that the Arboretum represents the vision of acclaimed horticulturalist Claire Sawyer, who is now in her 28^th year as its Director, is all the more reason to check in for a refresher.

I’m also going to head north (or is that down east?).  Last year I saw the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden for the first time (shame on me…). That visit was in June.  This year it will be in a different month and I intend to also see the Beatrix Farrand Garden and a few other historic properties in that state.

And, we've blocked off a week in
September to see Yosemite.

As long as I’m planning, how about something outside of the Northeast?  I sometimes feel as though I spent an entire year of my life on airplanes commuting between Boston and San Jose or San Francisco.  On those business trips, I flew over Yosemite National Park a hundred times without ever managing to visit it.  I have decreed this is the year I rectify that omission.  It will likely be in the fall, after most of the tourists have decamped.  It was America’s first National Park and still, arguably, its most dramatic.

The thermometer outside my window says it is 18˚ right now.  But, just by writing this, I’m already starting to feel as though I just might make it through this winter intact.  

Hit the Road, Jack!

One of my cherished memories of a July morning is this:  I am standing in cool grass surrounded by a seaside garden in its full summer glory; a symphony of color and form.  Beyond the garden is the ocean or, more specifically, Little Narragansett Bay.  The breeze from the water is delicious; the sight of sailboats bobbing in the water makes the contrast with the garden all the more vivid…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that gardeners love to show off their handiwork, especially for a worthy cause.  And, July is the heart of the garden tour season here in New England.

A garden in Windham, NH to be
open July 13 and 14

Perhaps your July will be spent in a distant vacation spot but, if you live in New England and are staying local for some part of the month, or visiting this part of the country from elsewhere, consider taking a day (or many days) and going on a garden tour.  You may be benefitting a local garden club’s civic development programs or a national garden preservation organization but, mostly, you will be benefitting yourself.  Seeing someone else’s garden opens our eyes to the possibilities in our own back yard.

You could start on Tuesday, July 9^th when the Falmouth Garden Club hosts ‘Falmouth Blooms’, a look at nine private in-town gardens.  The tour runs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and tickets will be available the day of the tour at the Falmouth Historical Society Education Center, 65 Palmer Avenue.

A Japanese-inspired garden to be
open in Canterbury, NH July 13-14

The next day, you can tour a series of private gardens in East Sandwich from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  The tour benefits the environmental education programs of the Thornton W. Burgess Society and its Green Briar Nature Center.  Tickets are available at the Nature Center, 6 Discovery Hill Rd. in East Sandwich.

The garden tour floodgates open on Saturday, July 13 as the Garden Conservancy Open Days Program spotlights five gardens in Westport, Dartmouth, and South Dartmouth; two gardens in Stonington, Connecticut; and six gardens in Nashua, Londonderry, Canterbury, Goffstown, Chichester and Windham, New Hampshire.  The Merrimack Valley gardens will also be open on Sunday, as will one in Rockville, Connecticut.  You can get capsule descriptions and locations of all of the Open Days gardens, which are open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., here. 

A seaside garden to be open July 13
in South Dartmouth, MA

That same day, one of the ‘grand dames’ of garden tours will be held as the Lenox Garden Club hosts the ‘Hidden Treasures of the Berkshires’ in Lee and Tyringham.  The five gardens include a thousand-acre estate with the remains of a ‘Marble Palace’ and two Gilded Age estates remodeled for contemporary living.  You can get more information here.

Also on July 13, The Private Gardens of the Kennebunks tour will be held in Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, Maine.  You can get details about the tour here.  The 19th annual edition of the event benefits the region's child abuse prevention organization.  The hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

On Sunday, July 14, the Provincetown Art Association will host a Secret Garden tour through P’town’s East End between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.  A fleet of shuttles will make continuous stops among the gardens and you can get additional information about the tour here.  Also on Sunday, the Georges River Land Trust in Rockland, Maine, hosts its immensely popular ‘Gardens in the Watershed’ tour.  This tour is more than just pretty flowers. Among the seven gardens are a working farm, a nursery and a sunflower business, and the price of a tour ticket includes short talks on gardening-related topics.  You can get more information here.

The Pergola at the Farm House
in Bar Harbor, ME, open July 28

Saturday, July 20, will be a very busy day for garden tours.  If you’re in the Berkshires, you can be part of the Gardens of Pittsfield tour either Saturday or Sunday.  Just to the south, the New Marlborough Cultural Council hosts a garden tour in that community on Saturday.

Also on July 20, Bedrock Garden in Lee, NH opens for the one day per month that Jill Nooney welcomes drop-in guests.  The 36-acre garden is rich in both horticulture and sculpture.

In the Worcester area, the Garden Conservancy will open two gardens in Stow and one each in Sterling, North Grafton, and Boylston on July 20. Those gardens are open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  In Vermont’s Equinox Valley, The Garden Conservancy offers two gardens in Manchester and one each in East Arlington and South Londonderry.  If you’d like to see gardens in nearby Connecticut, two gardens in Meriden will be open on Saturday and, on Sunday, four gardens in Farmington, Canton and New Hartford.

Finally, on July 28, there are Open Days in Bar Harbor, Maine.  Three properties, two of them inextricably linked to Beatrix Farrand, are among them. Garland Farm was Ms. Farrand’s last home and garden; The Farm House is the only surviving Farrand-designed garden (1928) in its original state in Bar Harbor and has been owned by the same family for the past century. The third property, Kenarden, is notable for its Italianate garden and lush, romantic flower gardens.  The three properties are open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. only.

"Well, No, You Can't Be As Desperate As That..."

Like everyone else in America, I am spending Sunday evenings this winter in front of my television watching ‘Downton Abbey’.  And, like every male watching the show (or at least I suspect this is the case), I was only half paying attention last week because Lady Edith’s wedding preparations and resulting tribulations can hold me spellbound for only so many minutes. But Betty loves the show and so I watch it, too, provided I’m allowed to read the newspaper, work a Sudoku or read email at the same time.

The Dowager Countess offers Lady
Edith some advice about gardening

At the risk of providing a spoiler alert, in last week’s installment it is 1921 and Lady Edith has been jilted at the altar by Sir Anthony Strallan (who appears to be on the wrong side of 70 but whom Lady Edith desperately loves).  Lady Edith takes to her bed, sobbing.  Then, after perhaps a month, we see Lady Edith trying to come to terms with her new status as Perpetual Spinster.  Seeking direction in her life, she goes to her grandmother, the Dowager Countess, and the following exchange takes place:

The Dowager Countess:  “Surely, there must be something you can put your mind to.”

Lady Edith:  “Like what, gardening?”

The Dowager Countess: “Well, no, you can’t be as desperate as that.”

At that point, I put down my crossword puzzle and started shaking my fist at the television.  How dare Downton Abbey put down gardening!

Gertrude Jekyll, a
contemporary of the
Dowager Countess

And then I started to think that, well, it’s 1921 and maybe gardening really was a ‘desperate’ avocation for a woman, and especially a titled woman.  Then, a couple of names popped into my mind.  The first one was Gertrude Jekyll.  Ms. Jekyll was born in 1843 and so would likely have been a contemporary of the Dowager Countess.  By 1890, Ms. Jekyll was the most sought-after garden designer in the United Kingdom and she would go on to create more than 400 gardens in Britain and America.  In 1921, Ms. Jekyll published Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden, a book that would inspires millions of mixed flower borders.  It was likely in the Downton Abbey library.

Beatrix Farrand.  Martha Levinson
could have made the introduction

The second name that occurred to me was Beatrix Farrand.  Born in 1872, she was American and so wouldn’t have had a title, but it is quite likely that the Levinsons (the American family that married into the Crawleys and replenished their fortune) could have arranged an introduction, as Ms. Farrand was the niece of Edith Wharton, who would have been a neighbor of Martha Levinson in both Newport and New York City.  Ms. Farrand began designing gardens at 25; roughly Lady Edith’s age.  And, Ms. Farrand was working in England in 1921, designing the magnificent garden at Dartington Hall in Devon.

Vita Sackville-West.  Although
titled (she was Lady Nicolson),
she did a little gardening.

But, even knowing that the Dowager Countess was rather openly class conscious, it would have been impossible for her to ignore Vita Sackville-West (or, to introduce her more properly, Lady Nicolson).  Born in 1892 and so only a few years older than Lady Edith, Lady Mary already had several successful published novels by 1921 (‘The Dragon in Shallow Waters’ was published that year).  In 1930, she and her husband would acquire Sissinghurst Castle, where Lady Mary would go on to do some very nice gardening.

I realize that Downton Abbey is drama and that it is the product of the imagination of Julian Fellowes.  But Mr. Fellowes seems to have it in for gardeners.  In Season One, we learned that since the Norman Conquest, the Dowager Countess has won the annual prize for ‘Best Bloom’ at the Downton Village flower show.  But the Dowager Countess actually has nothing to do with growing those roses.  It is her gardener who does all the work, and she simply shows up to collect the prize.  Moreover, in doing so, she is deliberately slighting the work of her own butler’s father, whom everyone in Downton knows has exquisite rose-growing skills and who ought to have been winning the competition all along.

All right; so maybe I’ve been paying more attention to Downton Abbey than I let on.  But darn it, Mr. Fellowes, go a little easier on us gardeners.