Daily Archives: July 8, 2023

Saturday, July 15, 9:45 am – 4:00 pm – The Mountain Garden Walks Tour

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The Mountain Garden Walks tour for July 2023 features six lovely Vermont gardens, all beautifully integrated into their unique properties and scaled to fit the landscapes.  The tour offers a variety of size of properties: two are large with extensive perennial gardens, brooks and ponds with meadow and mountain vistas, while another features small gardens closely surrounding a charming, old country house.  Stone walls and terraces as well as evergreen tree lines provide unique backdrops for these wonderful gardens.  

Some of the gardens are the personal designs of the owners, reflecting their own character, although others are carefully maintained professional designs.  Three of the gardens are within walking distance of each other in the lovely Landgrove Valley, and the other two are only a short drive away.  Our tour booklet will include a brief history of the valley and its early inhabitants.  This tour will offer inspiration and beauty to both the avid gardener and the viewer simply out for a summer stroll. 

Garden tours in the “mountain towns” have a special setting with vistas of Bromley, Stratton and Magic (Glebe) mountains from every property. Gardens build on these vistas, each one presenting a unique and inviting landscape of stone walls, woodlands, perennials and wildflower gardens. ​All proceeds go to Green Mountain Gardeners Lib Thieme Scholarship Fund. $30. Tickets are available online through Eventbrite by clicking HERE.

Wednesday, July 12, 10:00 am – 11:00 am – Cultivating Cures: The Botany, Ecology, and Lore of New England Medicinal Flora

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In this Berkshire Botanical Garden slide-illustrated talk — July 12, from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. — we will explore medicinal plants in New England, from Old World introductions and the Doctrine of Signatures to Native American remedies and cures. Early colonial practitioners blended European herbal lore with Native American knowledge resulting in a uniquely American medicinal tradition. Topics will include the evolution of natural toxins and their uses in drugs, tonics and bitters, and food preservation in colonial and 19th century American homes.

Professor Judith Sumner is a Massachusetts-born botanist who specializes in ethnobotany, flowering plants, plant adaptations, and garden history. She has taught at the college level and at many botanical gardens, including the Arnold Arboretum and Garden in the Woods. Her studies have taken her to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the British Museum (Natural History). For several years, under the pseudonym of Laura Craig, she authored a column, “The Gardener’s Kitchen,” in Horticulture
Magazine. Her most recent book is Plants Go To War: A Botanic History of World War II. This lecture is jointly presented by BBG and the Lenox Garden Club.