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Tag: Garden Conservancy Open Days

  • Thursday, June 30, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Martha’s Vineyard Open Days Garden Tour

    On Thursday, June 30, explore three private gardens in Vineyard Haven and West Tisbury, open to the public through The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program. Hours vary at each garden. Admission to each private garden is $5, Open Days are rain or shine, and no reservations are required. Call 1-888-842-2442, or visit www.opendaysprogram.org for more information.

    At East Hill (133 Pasture Gate Road, Vineyard Haven; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.), Isabel Shattuck’s property on Lake Tashmoo features a welcoming moongate and split-rail fence draped with ‘New Dawn’ roses, hinting at the abundant blooms beyond. Lavenders, delphiniums, lilies, and additional roses are just some of the plants grown in the perennial garden, while stewartias, hollies, azaleas, and ferns highlight a woodland path. The Tashmoo Garden (253 West Spring Street, Vineyard Haven; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) was begun thirty-two years ago and has evolved to include specimen trees such as dawn redwoods, copper beech, and katsura, as well as a hillside of daylilies, a peony hedge, hydrangea and azalea collections, and a vegetable/cutting garden. At The Folly (57 Lamberts Cove Road, West Tisbury; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.), ivy-covered balustrades and finials, planted urns, and winding hedges evoke an Italian villa, while a color theme of blue, white, and green foster a cool and relaxed atmosphere. Parterres, groundcovers, ferns, and flowers combine with stonework, varied grades, and views of the Vineyard Sound beyond.

    These Open Days gardens are featured in the 2011 Open Days Directory; a soft-cover book that includes detailed driving directions and vivid descriptions written by their owners. The directory includes garden listings in eighteen states and costs $21.95 including shipping. Visit www.opendaysprogram.org or call the Garden Conservancy toll-free at 1-888-842-2442 to order with a Visa, MasterCard or American Express, or send a check or money order to: the Garden Conservancy, P.O. Box 219, Cold Spring, NY 10516. Discount admission tickets are available as well through advanced mail order.

    The 2011 Open Days program is generously sponsored by Fine Gardening magazine as its National Media Sponsor. Fine Gardening magazine brings you breathtaking design ideas, helpful techniques, and the know-how to get great results in your own garden.  Painting by Thaw Malin III entitled “West Shore, Tashmoo” available at www.thawmalinart.com.

  • Sunday, July 25, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Washington, Connecticut Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy has scheduled a full day of private garden openings on Sunday, July 25, from 10 – 4, in Washington, Connecticut.  Please note that two of the gardens will be open from noon to four only.  For complete details, log on to www.gardenconservancy.org.  Tickets are not necessary – there is a $5 entrance fee per garden.

    Red Mill Farm, Washington, Connecticut

    Informal gardens set off an 1840s farmhouse and historic pre-Revolutionary War sawmill. Intimate spaces on changing levels around the house and conservatory, paved with local granite, feature tropical and half-hardy container plants and vines along with roses and perennials. A white garden with flagstone paving filled with plants is surrounded by trellises with roses and clematis. Sweeping lawns drop to the sawmill area, where native plants, wildflowers, and a wet garden border the millpond and waterways. Amble through a new woodland area with its rocky pool.

    Ridge Field, 49 Painter Ridge Road, Washington, Connecticut

    After gardening for more than twenty years around a modernist house in dark oak woods on a steep hillside, we migrated to a gambrel-roofed cottage adjacent a bright blue swimming pool surrounded by a ranch-style fence in the middle of a hayfield! Sun? Check. Flat? Check. Now what? JUST KEEP IT MANAGEABLE!! Twelve years later, a series of garden spaces and borders frame the toned-down pool. They are anchored by select trees and shrubs for year-round interest from nearby windows and are enclosed with a “birds lunch” hedgerow. A small, mixed orchard of berries and fruits and a vegetable patch (now rampant with foxgloves and hollyhocks) have pushed out into the hayfield. This garden has appeared in various magazines.

    Hollister House Garden, 300 Nettleton Hollow Road, Washington, Connecticut

    This is an old-fashioned, but unusual, rambling formal garden informally planted with an exuberant abundance of both common and exotic plants in subtle, and sometimes surprising, color combinations. High walls and hedges divide separate rooms and open to create interesting vistas out towards the landscape. Recent expansion of the garden has been completed with other areas being revised.  See picture below.

    Directions:
    From I-84, take Exit 15/Southbury. Take Route 6 north through Southbury and Woodbury. Turn left onto Route 47 North. Go 4 miles, past Woodbury Ski Area on left, and turn right onto Nettleton Hollow Road. Go 1.7 miles. Garden is on right. Please park along road.

    Ron & Nancy Chute, 8 Kirby Road, Washington, Connecticut (Please Note: This garden is open from 12 – 4 only)

    Our 1774 house faces Washington’s Green. Behind it, you will find a serene, private space with mature trees, a long lawn framed with boxwood, stone walls, and woodland plantings. This was created on L-shaped, sloping land after years of benign neglect. The owners, who maintain the property themselves,  leveled the lawn and planted the slopes with tapestries of shrubs and perennials. Tall, tightly pruned hollies screen the rear terrace, and the adjoining cow-shed foundation is now a parterre garden with cast-iron fountain. A cucumber magnolia and other large trees shelter shade-loving collectibles.

    Directions:
    The Chute and Thomson gardens are located near Washington Congregational Church, where Wykeham Road and Kirby Road join Route 47. Parking is available on Kirby Road and in parking lot of Gunn Library, off Wykeham.
    From Route 47 north past intersection of Route 199, turn right onto Wykeham to park at Gunn Library. Or, continue on Route 47 behind church and turn left onto Kirby Road to park there.
    From Nettleton Hollow, go north to Wykeham Road. Turn left and continue to library parking lot on left just before intersection with Route 47. Or, turn right on Route 47 and then left on Kirby Road just past church.
    The address of Chute house is 8 Kirby Road, but the house faces Green. Park along Kirby Road and walk down sidewalk along Green to second house (Chute’s). Enter garden via a narrow passage between first and second house, marked by a red Japanese maple and an old well cover.
    Please park along Green and in front of Congregational Church, but not in front of Parish House.

    Orchard Terrace, 2 Old North Road, Washington, Connecticut (Please Note: this garden is open from 12 – 4 only)

    Orchard Terrace, designed by Erick Rossiter in 1898, is situated on a former apple orchard and overlooks the playing fields of the Gunnery. The garden is a work in progress; much of it created over the last five years. The property is speckled with rock outcroppings amongst which perennial gardens are planted. A pool and greenhouse have been added to showcase tropical plants and orchids as well as native plants and grasses. An effort has been made to provide a natural habitat for butterflies, birds, and other wildlife.

    Directions:
    Please walk across Green from Nancy Chute’s garden. Or, park in lower part of Gunn Library at Wykeham Road. Walk down Wykeham Road to Old North Road (about 100 yards), which is on left. The garden is first driveway on right. Do not attempt to park at house; parking will only be allowed on Green or at library.

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  • Sunday, July 25, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Columbia County, New York Open Day

    Columbia County, New York is just over the Massachusetts border in the Berkshires, and those of you in the area may wish to avail yourselves of another Garden Conservancy Open Day opportunity.  Admission to each private garden is $5, tickets are not required in advance, and full details may be found at www.gardenconservancy.org.

    Adams-Westlake, Ancram, New York

    Two writers, garden writer Abby Adams (see The Gardener’s Gripe Book, below) and her late husband, crime novelist Donald Westlake (who wrote under the name Richard Stark), authored the various plantings on this former farm, in a pastoral Columbia County valley. The gardens have evolved over twenty years, reflecting the owners’ deepening involvement with the larger landscape. Ornamental gardens, perennial borders, a walled swimming pool enclosure, an ornamental frog pond, and a courtyard herb garden frame the 1835 farmhouse. A small orchard and a cutting garden/vegetable plot continue the farming tradition. Behind the house, strategically placed paths and sitting areas guide the visitor through the landscape to a deep natural ravine where a spring-fed pond faces a field of wildflowers. A winding creek has recently been liberated from its tangle of thorny multiflora rose, to be replaced by wild and native plant species. Above the ravine, high meadows offer sweeping views.

    Grant & Alice Platt, 46 Tibbet Lane, East Taghkanic, New York

    This garden, which won a Golden Trowel Award from Garden Design magazine in 2005, is nestled in the woods at the end of a country lane. It takes advantage of a widely varied landscape to create a series of informal gardens that attempt to exploit the beauty of the natural setting. The site contains woodland paths, which wander over bridges across a creek and past the remains of old stone walls and natural rock formations. Included in the gardens are sunny herbaceous borders, a rock garden, shade garden, and a park-like hillside garden. Out of sight but just over a rise is a path that leads to a swimming pond.

    Directions:
    From Taconic State Parkway north, pass Route 82/Ancram/Hudson exit and go 1.6 miles. Turn right onto Post Hill Road (from north, turn left). Go 0.8 mile to a silo at Nostrand Road. Turn left and go 0.3 mile to Route 27 (no sign). Turn left and go 1 mile to Taconic Parkway underpass. Go 0.5 mile to Tibbet Lane. Turn left. Proceed to parking area.

    Helen Bodian, Ancramdale, New York  (Please note this garden is open from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm only)

    The setting is old farmland at a relatively high elevation, cradled in a cirque of hayfields, deciduous forest and meadow, and intersected by a dirt road. Over time, thanks to a desire to experiment with mood and style and unusual plants, the owners  developed four separate gardens, each with its own character and season. In the process, they’ve tried to follow a rule that would unite all four: while displaying a love for botanical diversity and without confiding ourselves to natives, the plantings must nevertheless fit our landscape or play off the surrounding native flora. Starting next to the house is a naturalistic rock garden, scaled both to a shale hill suspended above it and to an elongated modern addition to the house. Across the road is a romantic garden in the form of an open square, and adjacent to that is the greenhouse and its walled garden. For those of you who have visited in the past, the all too labor-intensive, wildly colorful walled garden has been replaced with quite its opposite – a quiet, contemplative, modernist design containing a small pool. Finally, down a longish path, is a productive vegetable and cutting garden where we grow odd and unusual edible plants. The paths, which make patterns through the meadows and connect the gardens to one another, also connect to the outer landscape, leading from the gardens to pond and woods and up the hills to miles of forest trails.

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  • Sunday, July 18, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Berkshire County Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy will host an Open Day in the Berkshires, and in nearby Columbia County, NY,  on Sunday, July 18.  Admission to each participating garden is $5 per person, and admission may be paid in cash or by check. Tickets are not required to attend. For more information, log on to www.gardenconservancy.org. Image below courtesy of Rich Pomerantz, photographer and author of Great Gardens of the Berkshires. Descriptions are below:

    Thomas Gardner, 2171 State Road, Richmond, Massachusetts

    This is a rustic vegetable and flower garden set in the side yard of an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the Berkshires. The farm currently raises Cotswold sheep and mixed poultry. Rustic picket fences, grass paths, and grapevine trellises are features of the rough and tumble site. The owner raises Australian shepherds and Italian Maremma sheepdogs. An open living porch and stone terrace face the garden.

    Directions:
    From I-90/Massachusetts Turnpike, take West Stockbridge exit to Route 41 north into Richmond and to corner of Route 41 and Lenox Road.  The garden is at yellow farmhouse surrounded by gray picket fence and with red barn behind. Parking will be marked.

    Rockland Farm, 180 Stony Kill Road, Canaan, New York

    This garden comprises a variety of areas that flow one from another over about fifteen acres and continue to evolve after nearly twenty years. The 450-foot-long rock ledge is completely cleared and planted. The three-acre pond is dug and filled, and we are starting to work on the shoreline. The lawn in front of the 150-foot-long rock garden has been re-shaped to align better with the water garden. The perennial beds around our pool have been extended and redesigned. The hornbeams edging the lavender garden are starting to form a raised hedge. The vegetable and tropical container gardens are now well established, and the woodland is being expanded. Much has changed since the garden appeared in the book Great Gardens of The Berkshires.

    Directions:
    From east, take Route 295 from Route 41 in Massachusetts or from Route 22 in New York past tip of Queechy Lake (on right), and then take first dirt road on right (Stony Kill Road). After about 0.5 mile, look for a parking sign.

    The Tilden Japanese Garden, 576 State Route 20, New Lebanon, New York

    Nestled at the gateway to New Lebanon, this garden celebrates its heritage from the Shakers, Governor Samuel Tilden, and Shuji’s Restaurant. The brilliance of red bridges acts as a foil for ‘Nikko’ irises, weeping jades, ‘Casablanca’ lilies, ginkgos, and many specimen plants. Waterfalls provide sustenance to grasses and pebbled shores with koi lurking beneath water lilies. Ancient lanterns stand guard while protruding boulders provide sculpture. A smaller “courtyard garden” sits silently against a stained glass window. A Shaker ice house complements this harmony as ‘Sargent’ cherry trees, a gift from Japan, commemorate peace among nations.

    Directions:
    The Tilden Japanese Garden is at intersection of Routes 20 & 22. Through black gates of Tilden Mansion, garden is behind Victorian house. Parking is across street at a white Shaker meetinghouse on south meadow.

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  • Monday, June 28, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Garden Conservancy Open Day in Martha’s Vineyard

    The Garden Conservancy will sponsor an Open Day in Martha’s Vineyard on Monday, June 28, from 10 – 4 (one garden is only open until 2 pm – see below). This is a walking or bike tour with little parking available in Edgartown. The best way to reach Edgartown is via Vineyard Transit Authority (www.vineyardtransit.com). There is bus service from ferry terminals at Oak Bluffs (#13) and Vineyard Haven (#1 or #13) to the Visitor Center on Church Street. There are public restrooms at Visitor Center.

    85 South Water Street

    The original parts of this house are believed to date from the 1840s. More than fifty years ago a former owner and founder of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club set out the sunken geometric garden in the shape of a Union Jack. In the late 1990s, the English garden designer Penelope Hobhouse added some important features to the garden, particularly the enclosure of the sunken flag garden to create an outdoor room. The garden contains some rare and unusual, as well as native, plants. Currently, the owners, who are hands-on gardeners from England, work closely with Jeff Verner of Verner Fine Gardens to implement further design changes.

    108 North Water Street – Stretch’s Garden

    The garden called “Stretch’s Garden” is comprised of a hillside garden border, flowing down the hillside, with Edgartown Harbor creating quite a picturesque backdrop. The owner writes: “We can enjoy the full-season display from our front porch of dozens of perennial species, including hand-pollinated seedlings of delphinium, phlox varieties, gaura, agastache, and Oriental lilies. Many tried-and-true annuals such as Marguerite daisy, angelonia, cosmos, and cleome help summer-long interest and beauty. I enjoy doing my own flower arrangements, but hate to steal even one bit of color from the garden, so we created the cut flower garden at the back of the house. Now with our newly enclosed glass back porch addition, we love its beauty so much we think we’ll have to add a third garden to cut from!”

    Cate & Tom Applegate, 61 South Summer Street (open until 2 pm)

    The garden was created in 1992 and includes a border of mature evergreens enhanced by layers of rhododendrons, hydrangeas, arborvitaes, cypress, leucothoe, hollies, and hemlocks with an understory of ferns and ivy. The yard has a delicate band of white impatiens circling it, which serves to complement the cool feeling accentuated by the canopy of stately trees. The atmosphere is serene, calm, and elegant, and is added to by an intimate private patio surrounded by sunny perennial flower beds abundant with blooms and color from May through October. Phlox, Shasta daisy, dahlia, veronica, delphinium, and several varieties of lilies all find their home here. Jeff Verner of Verner Fine Gardens assists with the garden.

    Michael & Janice Donaroma, 46 Braley’s Way

    This quintessential cottage compound consists of seven gardens each having its own unique character. A rose-covered trellis covers the entire front of the guest cottage, playing off the whimsical island bed. The upper level has a cool meditative garden while the studio bed is filled with hot, happy colors. Inside the pool area is the white garden which bursts into bloom during mid-summer. At the far end of the property is the Mauve Garden which leads into the enclosed cut flower and veggie garden. Enjoy the diversity on this small half-acre of property.

    John & Judith Tankard, 16 School Street

    This is a new garden planted in 2005 to complement the historic house built around 1730 and fully renovated by the owners, an architect and a garden writer (who has spoken twice to The Garden Club of the Back Bay.) The garden was designed by Nan Blake Sinton and is composed mainly of hardy shrubs and ornamental trees. Pale pink ‘New Dawn’ roses climb on the fence surrounding the garden, and the roof of the garden shed is covered in ‘White Eden’ and ‘Abraham Darby’ roses as well as a Clematis montana rubens. There are two crabapples (Malus ‘Donald Wyman’), a large Viburnum sieboldii, and fragrant lilacs in the main garden. An espalier, created from Viburnum plicatum mariesii, on the wall of the house and a hedge of clipped Philadelphus coronarius in the parking area provide a bit of formality. There are small flower beds with astilbes, lavender, nepeta, salvia, and other perennials. A small brick patio is planted with lace cap hydrangeas and Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Enziandom’. At the front of the house, there are American hollies, English boxwood, Ilex glabra ‘Nigra’ and a large viburnum. One of the outstanding features of the garden is a large, old sycamore maple on the lane at the corner of the property, a survivor from earlier days.

    Woodside Garden – Dorothy Chaffee, 78 Planting Field Way

    The garden at Planting Field Way is a woodside garden built on the bones from other gardens of my past. When the owner moved from the harsher conditions of her home at Job’s Neck, located on Edgartown Great Pond, “into town,” she brought some of the plants with her. Because of the more sheltered quality of the new garden, she was able to incorporate more delicate plantings such as dahlias, phlox, delphiniums, and campanulas. Her garden consists of a variety of heights, leaf shapes, and textures, and incorporates her favorite colors: peach, salmon, soft yellow, pink, and white with touches of blue. Each year she has added a few perennials that meet her criteria for color and form. The play off the salmons and soft yellows off the blues and whites are echoed inside the house and on the deck. The colors follow one throughout the house and yard. She feels the garden has a wonderful serene and private quality. The garden contains a low stone wall, a statue, and a birdbath as well as a stone pathway—the plantings complement and highlight these features and draw one’s eye through the garden. The rhododendrons form a pretty backdrop to the garden and surrounds. Recently she has expanded the garden so it can be seen from the screened porch as well as the back deck.

    For directions and ticketing information, log on to www.gardenconservancy.org.

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  • Sunday, June 6, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Garden Conservancy Open Day in Berkshire County

    Two  fabulous gardens will be open to the public on Sunday, June 6, from 10 – 4, through The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program.

    Black Barn Farm,  937 Summit Road in Richmond:

    After being greeted by a pair of fantastical bird topiary, guests pass by the new “back door” terrace and its collection of container plantings. (Don’t miss the alligator on top of the Taxus hatfieldii!) Proceed through doors into the privet-hedged spring bulb garden, with its Fritillaria melagris, muscari, and thalia. Gazing balls are placed at face height, which allows you to see yourself in the garden. A stroll down an allée of Wyman crabapples leads you to the Tsuga chinensis-hedged pool garden and shade pavilion. Proceeding west through a fanciful taxus colonnade, enjoy the seventy odd specimen topiary in various stages of development. A pergola of Robinia pseudoacacia, draped with wisteria and under-planted with bulbs, leads you past the boxwood topiary garden and into the formal potager, with its beech hedge and rustic growing frames. Check out the new kitchen garden on the west side of the house, with its bluestone-and steel-raised beds. The garden encompasses approximately three acres.

    Apple Hill, 12 Red Rock Road in West Stockbridge:

    This magical writer’s retreat was once an apple farm, and many old apple trees still grow here. It is a place of quiet trees; a forest of silver birches flows into drifts of orchards, amid the tranquil green of white pines. There is a harmonious unity between the house and its setting. A cobblestone terrace at the back is set with drifts of ferns and blurs the division between indoors and outdoors, as does the wisteria-draped pergola. A harp-shaped grass garden along the driveway leads to the lovely curving rhododendron plantings, and these in turn connect to the long garden, which runs the length of the houses and beyond, set with golden locust trees and mixed plantings — evergreen and deciduous shrubs, roses, irises, peonies, delphiniums, and other perennials. The long garden culminates in a rock garden and a meditation bed that the children call “The Secret Garden”. A series of smaller ponds flows down the hillside to the main pond, which is set about with willows, planted with water lilies, and flanked by a borrowed landscape of blue hills. An arbor walk featuring a fish pool links the house with the writing studios. Woodland beds among the birches are planted with hosta, maidenhair and ostrich fern. Come discover the gardens that Tina Packer has described as “among the most beautiful and inviting I’ve ever seen.”

    For ticketing information, log on to www.gardenconservancy.org and click on to “Open Days.”

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