Boston Flora

Tag: Berkshire Living

  • Sunday, June 2, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Berkshire Area Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program kicks off in the Berkshires on Sunday, June 2, from 10 – 4, with two superior gardens.  Ticketing information may be found at www.gardenconservancy.org.
    Under the Hemlocks, 258 Great Barrington Road
    Housatonic, MA 01236-9773
    The owners write: After a two-year absence from the Open Days program, this garden is ready to be shown again. The garden is maturing and ripening – taking on what it wants – where and when. We still have the basic structure in a wooded setting–a bowl, with a rock garden in the front and the Magnolia garden, with the pond and upper walk in the back, surrounded by many rhododendrons. Boulders are everywhere – such blessings. The many shrubs and trees we planted have grown and taken their places with grace and certainty. There are eleven Japanese maples–at least four varieties –with their graceful shapes and colors. The white Thalia daffodils look spectacular under three of these maples on the side garden. In the Fall, it is the blue Lobelia siphilitica under the same maples. The weeping pines are larger and even droopier. Different grasses and hostas are everywhere. Perennials do their thing: the blue/purple drift of phlox divaricata mingling with the tulips in Spring; the foxgloves popping up all over the upper back garden a little later. Primula Japonica put on a major display after the Spring bulbs die back. Then summer moves on apace, with lilies, including waterlilies in the pond making their appearance, culminating with the Fall display of full grown coleus, phlox, blooming Ligularia Desdemona, dahlias, grasses, Kirengeshomas, and brugmansias. Sculptures dot the garden here and there, also the unexpected. The garden has been featured in several magazines: Passport, Country Living Gardener, Country Gardens, and is one of the Great Gardens of the Berkshires, a recent book by Virginia Small and Richard Pomerantz. We have added a new garden–-the woodland walk–-a playground designed for our new grandson, complete with fire pit. People enjoy the natural flow and feel of this garden. Please feel welcome at Under the Hemlocks.

    Good Dogs Farm—Maria Nation and Roberto Flores, dirtmeisters
    334 West Stahl Road
    Ashley Falls, MA 01257
    The owners say: In the years since we were last open for the Garden Conservancy the gardens have undergone a major transformation. The madcap exuberance has been tamed. The perennials have given way to boxwood, yew, junipers and broad swaths of ground cover beneath clipped shapes. The palate is a more harmonious series of blues, greys and greens. Where once it was a riot of color, now it is a place for peace and contemplation; a place where the shadows and light are as much a part of the garden as the plantings themselves. The paths through the gardens still lead to the follies and eccentricities of the owners – the outdoor bake oven, the outdoor shower, the distant sleeping room, the Keep (a new viewing tower created by Grey Davis & Chase Booth), and the large vegetable garden contained by a rough cedar fence, etc etc. Now the paths also lead the wanderer to the mini donkeys and Haflinger horse, the new barn and paddocks, the farm that has replaced the wild meadow and a river walk carved from the bramble. And, of course, good dogs still live here – and sometimes they stay out of the garden. Our gardens have been featured in Cottage Living, Berkshire Living, The Litchfield Country Times, Oprah’s *O at Home*, Gardenista Daily, various catalogues and the books Great Gardens of the Berkshires and Jack Staub’s newest: Private Edens, published in the Spring of 2013. We look forward to seeing you.

    http://www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2013/03/gardens-book-jack-staub-private-edens-connecticut-virginia/_jcr_content/par/cn_contentwell/par-main/cn_blogpost/cn_image_1.size.private-edens-01.jpg

  • Saturday, September 25 – Sunday, September 26, 10 – 5 – 12th Annual Hancock Shaker Village Country Fair

    The Country Fair at Hancock Shaker Village on Saturday and Sunday, September 25 – 26 from 10 – 5 celebrates the bounty of the harvest with agricultural demonstrations, wagon rides, a fabulous Farmers Market, and huge tents full of the work of the best local and regional crafters and artisans. Come out to the farm and see all the Country Fair has to offer. At the Country Fair, vendors fill the Village with delightful fresh produce, finished farm products, and crafts of all sorts. The Farmers Market tents boast vegetables, flowers, maple sugar treats and hand-made cheeses. Artisans have furniture, Shaker style oval boxes, original paintings, candles and hand-woven textiles available for purchase. Plan plenty of browsing time for this amazing marketplace! Don’t miss the Food Tent with area restaurants and brews! Try your hand as a Shaker Baker in our Country Fair Pie Contest – in 2009, thirteen pies were entered, and this year’s judges include New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, Berkshire Living editor Lesley Ann Beck, Berkshire Eagle executive editor Tim Farkas, and RuralIntelligence.com co-founder Marilyn Bethany.  A display of quilts in the Round Stone Barn ell has become an integral part of the Country Fair each year.  Over 60 antique and newly made quilts are displayed in this juried show, fine examples of craftsmanship and tradition. You can submit a quilt for exhibition.   Adults – $17, Children 13 – 17 – $8, Children under 12 and Hancock Shaker Village Members Free.  For directions and more information, log on to www.hancockshakervillage.org.

    http://mariannehaffey.com/photos/orange_salsa.white.500.jpg


  • 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.