Daily Archives: September 25, 2024

Saturday, October 19, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Franklin, Hampden, & Hampshire Counties Open Day

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The Garden Conservancy presents three private gardens open to the public on October 19 from 10 – 4. Complete details are found at www.gardenconservancy.org

The Kinsey-Pope Garden in Amherst has been a work in progress since 1978. It is a landscape of many uncommon trees with strikingly beautiful bark and a wide variety of textures, flowers, berries, and great autumn color; many shrubs with more than one season of beauty; perennials flowering in three seasons; ground covers of unusual dramatic effect covering all beds during all seasons; and in winter offering a wide palette of interesting shapes, lovely bark, and many evergreen trees and shrubs. In addition, there are three bridges over a stone-lined swale, a hand-built screened gazebo and curved top arbor, a charming little pond, many benches and Japanese stone lanterns, large-stone walkways and stone walls, and a Japanese inspired fence surrounding all of the ½-acre garden. Please note this garden is open for two sessions, 10 – 1 and 1 – 5.

Rock Valley Paradise is located in Holyoke. The garden is a sanctuary, and a happy place. Although the owner has flowers and herbs, her passion is food for the family. The spot includes a small orchard of fifteen fruit trees, apples, peaches, plums, pears, apricots, and cherries. Our berries include blueberries, goji berries, elderberries, and black, red, and champagne currants. The concord grapes provide us with lots of juice for the winter months. Seasonally she grows all five kinds of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, squash, eggplant, and all the other “regular veggies.” Our homestead also boasts two dairy goats, a dozen chickens, and a hive of honey bees. This garden’s estimated size is ¼ acre.

The last garden on the tour is Swampfield, in Sunderland (below). The owner says: “When we moved here in 2015, the property was a blank slate. Since then, we have added 7,000 sq. feet of perennial border, in a mixture of sun and shade. Our sunny borders are filled with classic cottage garden plants and many natives. While there’s a playful exuberance, the color palette within each season is relatively limited—creating a sense of harmony and continuity as you explore the property. The two woodland gardens are lush, with towering actaeas and tiny primroses and everything in between. The garden crescendos in the fall as mums, asters, sedums, and more explode alongside scores of ornamental grasses and shrubs—just as their foliage begins to take on exciting hues. “Welcome to Swampfield! This garden’s estimated size is 7,000 sq. feet.

Wednesday, October 23 – Sunday, March 2 – Lost Gardens of London

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Did you know that Southwark once had a zoo? That for a short spell Britain’s first ecological park was built within a stone’s throw of Tower Bridge? Or that one of the capital’s most celebrated botanical gardens now lies beneath the platforms of Waterloo station? The Garden Museum’s next exhibition Lost Gardens of London from October 23 – March 2 will reveal the secret history of some of London’s most beguiling forgotten gardens.

Thousands of gardens have vanished across London over the past five hundred years – ranging from princely pleasure grounds and private botanical gardens, to humble allotments and defunct squares, artists’ gardens, eccentric private menageries and the ecological parks of the twentieth century. Guest curated by landscape architect and historian Dr Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, Lost Gardens of London will explore this legacy and reveal tantalizing glimpses of some of the rich and varied gardens that once embellished the metropolis.

Paintings, prints, drawings, photographs and maps will bring these lost gardens to life, depicting changing trends and fashions in gardening while exploring London’s enduring love affair with nature, and how green spaces have always been a vital part of life in the capital.

In every borough, parks, gardens and green open spaces have succumbed to new roads, street-widenings, railway encroachments and new buildings, or have simply been swallowed up by suburbia. Accompanying public programmes will explore how the remaining green spaces that may be taken for granted in London today have survived thanks to protests, community action and legal protections being put in place. The exhibition is a timely reminder of the vulnerability of urban gardens and access to nature.

Lost Gardens of London coincides with a new book by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan of the same name, to be published by the Modern Art Press (and distributed by Yale University Press) in October 2024.

If you are traveling to Great Britain this coming year, put this exhibition on your itinerary. The Museum is located on Lambeth Palace Road in London. https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/visit/