The Garden Conservancy has arranged for an Open Day in Provincetown on Saturday, June 11.
The Garden of Alix Ritchie and Marty Davis may be found at 8 Commercial Street. This large garden, completely hidden from the road, is full of surprises. It features a wide variety of creative plantings that take advantage of the many microclimates found on the site. The garden includes cottage-style borders with color schemes that evolve through the seasons, changing from sparkling silvers and whites in June (spires of white foxgloves, drifts of oxeye daisies, and statuesque Scotch thistles) to rich and vibrant hot colors later in summer and into fall, when crocosmias, salvias, and agapanthus provide bold interest. Visitors will encounter a succession of garden vignettes—a potager, box hedging, charming groupings of pots, azaleas, clematis in variety, historic outbuildings, and a tranquil shade garden with ferns, epimediums, hostas, rodgersias, and spring ephemerals— culminating in a hillside covered by a grove of native tupelos.
Kenn Freed’s Garden (below) is at 70A Commercial Street. Visitors to this small town garden surrounding an historic nineteenth-century house are greeted by cloud-pruned boxwood in the front garden and a gravel area filled with a riot of self-seeding lupines, corn poppies, larkspur, oxeye daisies, foxgloves, and California poppies. Other features include a spectacular display of coleus of all shapes and colors in an array of pots; a mixed planting of hardy and tender perennials (including thalictrum, euphorbia, veronicastrum, salvias in variety); and a rock wall with a hot and dry western exposure covered with a mosaic of sedums accented by sempervivums massed in a well-curated collection of unique containers.
Directions: The West End Parking Lot is the closest public parking to the garden of Alix Ritchie and Marty Davis (8 Commercial Street) and the garden of Kenn Freed (70A Commercial Street). This lot is located on Commercial Street, roughly across from 50 Commercial Street. (Commercial Street is a one-way street heading west.) There is also limited metered parking on Commercial Street itself further down from the parking lot.
The Garden of John Derian is nearby at 396 Commercial Street. The small town garden of designer John Derian surrounds an historic and unique eighteenth-century house as well as the Provincetown outpost of John Derian Company’s New York City-based shop. A remarkable feature of the garden is a ten-foot-high hornbeam enclosure that shelters a large raised bed—filled with a constantly changing seasonal “menu” of vegetables, herbs, and cut flowers—surrounded by a thick straw mulch that brings a bit of the country to this garden in the center of town. The house’s elegant front façade is complemented by a loose planting of native bayberry rising above a well-manicured privet hedge. A mixed herbaceous and shrub border provides color and screening for an area reserved for outdoor entertaining.
Finally, at 546 Commercial Street sits the Garden of Barbara Cantor. A striking feature of this town garden is its long brick walkway flanked with beds of billowing catmint punctuated by bearded iris, larkspur, and California poppies. The garden also features perfectly framed views out to Provincetown Harbor and charming borders filled with climbing roses, peonies, lupine, geraniums, thalictrum, crambe, and other cottage garden plants. Elements of structure are provided by classic white picket fencing and neatly trimmed privet hedges. Along Commercial Street, a spreading zelkova tree shelters a mixed planting of lady’s mantle, foxglove, columbine, and other plants that flourish in the dappled shade beneath.
Directions: The MacMillan Pier Lot, in Provincetown Center (at Lopes Square, near the intersection of Commercial and Standish Streets) is convenient to the gardens of John Derian (396 Commercial Street) and Barbara Cantor (546 Commercial Street).
Admission to each garden is $7. Don’t forget to buy discounted admission tickets in advance. They never expire and can be used at most Open Days to make garden visiting easier.
