Boston Flora

The Garden Conservancy will host an Open Day in Essex County on July 26, featuring three gardens in Marblehead and Salem. $10 entrance fee for each garden for general public. Register at https://www.gardenconservancy.org/garden-directory/open-days

Jesta in Marblehead is a seaside garden, just a few feet above high tide, with stunning views of the open ocean, faces nearly constant wind and salt. The garden challenges are enormous, but understanding small differences in microclimate is helpful. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to success is finding plants that can grow in these harsh conditions. Despite a limited planting palette, there are numerous interesting shrubs, perennials and annuals that are utilized to great effect. This is a relatively new garden, just four years old, so creating garden rooms for entertainment and learning what works is an ongoing process.

Seaside Farm (below) is a two-acre site on Peach’s Point overlooking Doliber Cove, and has a rich garden history. During the early 1900s it was an Italianate formal garden with pools, formal rose garden, and statuary, part of an enormous estate owned by yachtsman Francis Crowninshield and his heiress, historical preservationist wife, Louise du Pont Crowninshield. The current owners bought the property with its overgrown and neglected gardens in 1996. Three years later, after discovering the property’s rich landscape history, the owners hired Doug Jones from Boston’s LeBlanc Jones Landscape Architects to restore the gardens. Based on period black-and-white photographs from 1937, new replicated iron railings were installed, caved-in concrete pools were rebuilt, and old roses were planted to recreate the garden. The original house no longer exists, thus certain landscape transitions presented challenges that have been handled delicately. The new house sits on the water, and the gardens surrounding it have been done in a more contemporary style. The property has some enormous beeches that date to the original period.

Renaissance Italy is a garden nestled among the dense period homes located at the northern edge of Salem’s famed McIntire Historic District. This delightful urban garden of only 2,049 square feet immediately transports the visitor out of 18th century Salem into Renaissance Italy through the use of interlocking garden rooms; multiple east/west and north/south axes; multiple tall mature arborvitaes; dense yew and boxwood hedging; ingenious brick and granite paving and changes of level throughout; water features with vintage millstone fountains; a 6,700-pound, four-foot-diameter brownstone column base from an early 19th century Greek Revival Salem Theater (which forms the centerpiece of one of the garden rooms); a new raised mahogany deck and dining area overlooked by a magnificent antique terra cotta Green Man fountain within an arched brick enclosure; and a profusion of vintage cast iron and terra cotta building fragments providing accents of instant antiquity, punctuated by the owners’ collection of antique Italian terra cotta pots bulging with flowers throughout. All in all, a magical space for alfresco dining, entertaining, reading, relaxing, or quiet introspection!