Boston Flora

Month: June 2009

  • Saturday, June 20, 10 – 4 – Beyond the Garden Gate Tour

    The North Andover Historical Society’s Beyond the Garden Gate 2009 tickets are on sale now at its 153 Academy Road location or log on to www.northandoverhistoricalsociety.org to purchase online!   Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 on the day of the tour.  Volunteers may purchase their tickets for half price at the Society.  Make a  single purchase of four tickets in advance for only $60.  Plan an outing with your friends while supporting the Historical Society and save.   Details on other ticket locations and an update on the time schedule for picking up the tour map during the week of June 15th will be announced soon.  During this 4th Annual Garden Tour, six beautiful gardens await exploration.  Volunteers and sponsors are still needed!  If you can help, please contact  nahistory@juno.com.

  • Friday, June 19 – Sunday, June 21 -Cape Ann Garden Festival

    Friday, June 19, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.    Beauport Reception and Talk $20/$15 members
    Enjoy an evening reception with wine, beer, and appetizers in the garden overlooking Gloucester Harbor and hear about the newly uncovered garden staircase that is part of the stunning new garden renovation at Beauport, The Sleeper-McCann House, a property of Historic New England.

    Saturday, June 20, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.    Garden Tour $35
    Tour glorious gardens with magnificent plantings and stunning vistas. This year new stops on the tour feature sculpture gardens, water views, private quarries and fabulous perennial and herb gardens. In addition several of the homes will be open for visitors’ viewing.

    Sunday, June 21,      Workshops, Lecture and Exhibition Tour

    10 a.m.-11 a.m. Planning a Garden for People and Pollinators, Kim Smith $15

    Author of Oh Garden of Fresh Possibilities! and an inspired designer and illustrator, Kim will talk about the ways to make a garden both beautiful for people and attractive to birds and butterflies.  Join us for a lecture and booksigning.

    11:30 a.m. -1:00 p.m. The Herb Garden in 18th Century New England, Judy Hallberg $20

    Herbs provide interesting foliage and are also the basis for lotions and salves with healing properties. Learn about herbs and the ways in which they were gardened and used in the 1700s. Judy Hallberg works with the 17th and 18th century gardens of the Ipswich Historical Society and recently completed restoration of the society’s 17th century Housewife’s Herb Garden.

    1:30 p.m. -2:30 p.m. Cape Ann Museum, Docent-led tour of the exhibit “A View from the Terrace” Free

    Free to Garden Festival ticket holders. The Museum is located at 27 Pleasant St., Gloucester. Call Jeanette Smith at 978-283-0455, extension 11 for reservations.

    3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Growing and Propagating Antique Roses, Peggy J. Flanagan $20, materials incl.

    Old Garden Roses are rewarding and easy to grow using organic methods. You’ll learn how to plant, prune and care for these beautiful roses. Each person will take home a potted rose cutting. Bring gloves and a pair of pruners. Peggy J. Flanagan is a landscape designer and an adjunct instructor in the landscape design program at North Shore Community College. She specializes in the history of New England gardening.

    For more information, and to purchase tickets on-line, log on to www.sargenthouse.org.  Tickets are also available at the Weathervane, 153 Main Street, Gloucester, and at the Sargent House Museum, 49 Middle Street, Gloucester, Massachusetts.

  • Sunday, June 28, 10 – 4 – City Spaces/Country Places

    Tower Hill’s annual tour of exceptional private gardens this year will feature the gardens of Northborough, Massachusetts.  Discover the gardeners’ unique perspectives, and return to your own garden with fresh ideas and inspiration. This special event features lush, meticulously tended gardens in the Northborough area.

    As always, a ticket to “City Spaces/Country Places” includes FREE admission all day to Tower Hill Botanic Garden. As a bonus this year, the Rose Society will present a Rose Show at Tower Hill on the same day as the Garden Tour!

    “City Spaces/Country Places” is an important fund-raiser for the Worcester County Horticultural Society and helps to support the educational programs and the ongoing care and stewardship of the gardens at Tower Hill. You can show your support for the Garden Tour by purchasing a sponsor ticket at $125 or a patron ticket at $75. These tickets help Tower Hill meet its mission and must be purchased in advance. Order tickets in advance: Members $20, Non-Members $25.  Day of tour Members $25, Non-Members $30.  Call 508-869-6111 x 136 to order your tickets, or log on to www.towerhillbg.org and purchase securely on-line.

  • Saturday, June 27, 10:30 – 3 – Secret Gardens of Squantum

    The Seaside Gardeners of Squantum present “Secret Gardens of Squantum”, a garden tour in Braintree, Massachusetts, on Saturday, June 27, from 10:30 a.m. to 3 pm, rain or shine.  Ticket prices are $15 each in advance, and $20 if purchased on the day of the event.   For directions, to reserve tickets, and for more information contact Laurie Kelliher at 617-773-4274.

  • Wednesday, June 24, 4 – 5:30 pm – Propagation by Cuttings Workshop

    From 1916 to 1979, Long Hill was the summer home of noted author and editor of The Atlantic Monthly, Ellery Sedgwick, and his first wife, Mabel Cabot Sedgwick, an accomplished horticulturist, gardener, and author of The Garden Month by Month. The Federal-style house was completed in 1925 and contains original woodwork from the ca.1812 Isaac Ball House in Charleston, South Carolina.

    Mrs. Sedgwick designed and planted the original gardens. After her death in 1937, Mr. Sedgwick’s second wife, the former Marjorie Russell, herself a distinguished gardener and propagator of rare plants, added many plants to the gardens, including unusual species and varieties of trees and shrubs, some introduced by the Arnold Arboretum.

    Today the gardens reflect the collective interests and tastes of both women. Five acres of cultivated grounds are laid out in a series of separate garden “rooms” surrounding the house. Each area is distinct in its own way and is accented by garden ornaments, structures, and statuary. The gardens are flanked on all sides by more than 100 acres of woodland as well as an apple orchard, meadow, and agricultural fields.

    Grow Long Hill’s signature plants from your own cuttings. Experienced propagators demonstrate setting up a propagation box, caring for your cuttings, and transplanting rooted plants. All materials provided.  $15 to Members of the Trustees of Reservations, $20 non-members. To pre-register, call 978-921-1944, x4018, or email needucation@ttor.org.

  • Saturday, June 20, 9 – 12 – Community Garden Volunteer Day

    Come down to the Westport Town Farm on Saturday, June 20, from 9 am – noon,  to learn about The Trustees of Reservations’ new community initiative to grow and harvest food that will be donated to local social service agencies.  At Westport Town Farm, livestock graze on open fields that boast an expansive view of the Westport River.  An antique farmhouse, dairy barn, corn crib, and stone walls dating back to Colonial times complete the picture of this working farm that served as a “poor farm” and infirmary for more than 100 years.

    With its 10-acre working hayfield, extensive salt marsh, and broad tidal river, Westport Town Farm is not only scenic, but of historic and ecological value.  The farm’s dual legacy of nurturing those in need and raising vegetables and livestock weave together at this remarkable coastal landscape, where you’ll see ospreys, gulls, and the occasional bald eagle soar overhead.Learn about gardening and help grow the food! Volunteers welcome. For more information, call 508-636-5780, or email bioreserve@ttor.org. Free to all.

  • Mondays, July 6, 13, 20, 27, August 3 & 10 – Lunch with The Food Project

    The Food Project ( a past recipient of Garden Club of the Back Bay grants) invites you to join them for lunch on summer Mondays between 12:30 – 1:30.  Each Community Lunch features the culinary creation of a local chef and highlights produce harvested fresh from the farms.  Please come and enjoy a farm-fresh meal right on the land where it is grown.  And, while you dine, Food Project interns will talk about their work.  The lunches take place in two locations:  Baker Bridge Farm on Route 126 in Lincoln: July 6, July 13, and August 3, and on the West Cottage Street Farm in Boston on July 20, July 27 and August 10.  $15 reserves your seat (seating is limited).  RSVP today: 781-259-8621 x30, or email events@thefoodproject.org.

  • Sunday, June 28, 10 – 4 – Berkshire County Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy’s Berkshire County Open Day will include the following superb properties. For more information, log on to www.gardenconservancy.org.

    Seekonk Farm – Honey Sharp’s Garden: 296 Division Street, Great Barrington, Massachusetts

    Featured in the 2008 book, Great Gardens of the Berkshires, this eighteenth-century Seekonk Farm is set amidst New England fieldstone walls, antique iron gates, and a handmade fence. A natural arbor beyond an American elm and a large katsura tree invites one to a woodland path where Honey Sharp continues to labor on re-introducing native plants. Closer to the house, a lavender edged walkway follows a small herb garden while the old-fashioned perennial beds now feature pale pink penstemon and dark fuchsia-colored sanguisorba rubbing shoulders. Leading to the pool garden are old-fashioned climbing roses spilling over a fence that borders the small vegetable garden. The pool garden enjoys a chartreuse, silver, and burgundy palette. Contrasting textures and shapes abound amidst the grasses, Japanese maples, smoke bush, ‘Black Lace’ sambucus, and small conifers. An old stone well cover, highlighted by rust colored lichens, remains a focal point. Golden Trowel Award in 2000.

    Under the Hemlocks,258 Great Barrington Road, Housatonic, Massachusetts

    This bowl-shaped garden in the foothills of Tom Ball Mountain came with many natural gifts: boulders, hemlocks, black birch, pines, etc. Adding shrubs, bulbs, and perennials rich in textures and color, Goshen stone paths, and various sculptures completed it. The owners were lucky to uncover a perfect place within the given ledge for water to gracefully fall into a small lily pond. This is a major focal point in the garden. It’s the flow of these gardens that seems to please: from the sunken “fairy woodland”, with a succession of bluebells, foxgloves then in fall, echinacea, to the over-scale rock garden, topped out by hydrangeas. Look for the secretive, mossy “Othello Boudoir” engulfed by ligularias next to the outdoor living room. Going behind the huge rhodies up the secretive path to the “upstairs” hosta path garden and around back to view the water garden, with perhaps a lotus in bloom will complete your tour. In June a few tulips and other bulbs may still be in bloom. This garden is one that is featured in the new book: Great Gardens of the Berkshires, by V. Small & R. Pomerantz.

    Good Dogs Farm – Maria Nation and Roberto Flores, 334 West Stahl Road, Sheffield, Massachusetts

    This is a distinctly handmade garden that includes the whims and accidents and (let’s be honest) half-baked ideas that would never end up in a professional “landscape.” It’s a place that reflects the owners’ philosophy that, like life, the garden is best when shared with friends, when simple pleasures are part of the plan, and when things aren’t taken too seriously. Here, good dogs romp and friends linger. Garden paths lead to numerous garden rooms, “secret” sitting areas, an outdoor shower, and an outdoor sleeping room. A handmade, rough-cedar fence surrounds our large vegetable/cutting garden where a very crowded bat house towers above. A wood burning bake oven gave Maria and Roberto an excuse to add a hedge garden that defines the pea-stone cooking courtyard. A new greenhouse-type-thing gave them another reason to add yet another garden area. The gardens have been featured in Cottage Living, Berkshire Living, The Litchfield County Times, and Oprah’s O at Home magazine. In 2008 they were honored to be included in the book Great Gardens of the Berkshires, and are still blushing to be included in such august company.

  • Friday, June 19, 5:30 pm – Invasive Plants Primer

    The Trustees of Reservations (www.thetrustees.org) will sponsor “Invasive Plants Primer for Homeowners and Volunteers” on Friday, June 19 beginning at 5:30 pm at Horsemunn Farm in Monson, Massachusetts.  Why is there such concern over these (often quite beautiful) plants? How can you get rid of them once they have gained a foothold in your yard? We will review some common local “invasives” and discuss some techniques for their control. There will be a walking tour of the farm to see the culprits up-close and, in honor of the solstice, the farm’s meditation labyrinth will be open for a pleasant meander. We will order takeout pizza or the like if there is enough interest.  Free to Trustees members, $5 suggested donation for nonmembers. To pre-register, and for directions, call 413-532-1631, x 13, or email pvregion@ttor.org.

  • Saturday, June 13, 11 – 3 – Elm Bank Plant Sale

    From 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM this Saturday, Joe Kunkel, horticulturalist extraordinaire, and David Fiske, Mass Hort’s Gardens Curator, will be on hand to show our great selection of plants for sale and to answer any questions you may have.

    EchnaceaThe plant sale will be outside the Greenhouse area of our site. You’ll find a wide selection of annuals and perennials, many brand new to the area.  On hand are new varieties of petunias, Vinca, and many unusual species.  Most plants are in 4″ pots at $2 a piece with a special tray price of 15 for $20.  You can mix and match on full trays.

    VincaWe also have a wide selection of perennials in gallon containers at the great price of $8 or six in tray at $35.  You’ll find brand new varieties of Achillea and Echinacea that are being seen in the latest horticultural magazines.  We also have plenty of tried and true favorites as well.

    So if you are still looking for plants for your garden and you want beautiful specimens at a great price, come down to Elm Bank this Saturday for a rewarding experience.

    Joe Kunkel will be on hand to help you choose the right plant for your garden.  Joe is a dedicated Trustee of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and oversaw the planting of the MHS Gardens on the Rose Kennedy Greenway.  For more information, log on to www.masshort.org.