Boston Flora

Tag: Great Barrington Massachusetts

  • Saturday, February 13 – Berkshire Botanical Garden Annual Winter Lecture

    Prince Charles’s Head Gardener, Debs Goodenough, will be the featured speaker at the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Annual Winter Lecture on Saturday, February 13, from 2 pm – 4 pm, at Monument Mountain High School in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.  A reception and book signing will follow the lecture.

    Ms. Goodenough replaced David Howard in 2008 as Head Gardener of The Highgrove Estate.

    Tickets cost $30 for members of the Botanical Garden, and $35 for the general public.  Reservations are essential. For tickets and more information, you may call 413-298-3926, or email info@berkshirebotanical.org.

  • Saturday, January 23, 1:00 – 2:00 pm – The Locavore Way

    Join author Amy Cotler at The Bookloft, 322 Stockbridge Road in Great Barrington, Massachusetts (near the Price Chopper) on Saturday, January 23, beginning at 1 pm, for a book signing of Amy’s new book The Locavore Way,  an event which will include appearances by local food vendors.  Amy will also be signing at the West Stockbridge Library, 21 State Line Road (Route 201) on February 5 at 7 pm, and will be with Slow Food Boston during the first week in May, details to be announced.  For a complete calendar of signing events, log on to www.amycotler.com.

    Amy Cotler brings 3 decades as a culinary professional (AKA food fanatic) and farm to table advocate to her books and other offerings.  A  longtime advocate of seasonal cooking and local eating, she is the founding director of Berkshire Grown, which became an early model for local farm and food advocacy. She consults, teaches and lectures nationally on food and farm to table issues.

    Ms. Cotler worked as the web food forum host for The New York Times and her food articles have been published in periodicals, including Fine Cooking, Kitchen Garden, Cook’s and Orion.  She has written 5 cookbooks, including Fresh from the Farm: The Massachusetts Farm to School Cookbook, a training tool for schools, which was distributed to every school Massachusetts and is now available free on-line.

    Her new book, published in November 2009, brings together her culinary and local food advocacy experience. The Locavore Way, Discover and Enjoy the Pleasures of Locally Grown Foods is a people’s solution to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a hands-on guide to becoming someone who seeks out and savors local foods.

    A veteran chef and cooking teacher, Ms. Cotler has taught home cooks and professionals at Institute for Culinary Education and Culinary Institute of America, where she also researched and wrote text for their professional cookbook.She has developed close to 1000 recipes, including many for the Joy of Cooking. Her media appearances include The Television Food Network and National Public Radio.

    http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NbPJnsz3L.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.