Boston Flora

Tag: Jill Nooney

  • Friday, September 25, 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Bedrock Gardens Tour

    Located just a few short miles from the New Hampshire seacoast, Bedrock Gardens integrates unusual botanical specimens, unique sculptures, and interesting landscape design and features. Over the past forty years, this thirty-acre site transitioned from a historic farm to an oasis of horticulture, art, and inspiration, featuring stunning landscapes such as a Spiral Garden, Parterre Garden, and Rock Garden. Attendees at this American Horticultural Society live tour on September 25 will have the unique opportunity to tour Bedrock Gardens with its creator Jill Nooney and to hear her speak on her recent book detailing the garden’s history. The tour will focus on spectacular fall color, including the GrassAcre, filled with Switchgrass, Hakone Grass, and Little Blue Stem. Registrants can also purchase the book in advance at this link for signing.

    Jill Nooney grew up in rural New Jersey. She attended Bennington College, Smith College School of Social Work, and the Radcliffe Seminars Program in Landscape Design. She has had a lifelong interest in plants, art, and healing the human spirit. She lives with her husband, Bob Munger, in an old farmhouse in New Hampshire. Together, over the span of forty years, they created Bedrock Gardens and, in 2023, they gifted the garden to the Friends of Bedrock Gardens to be enjoyed by all as a public garden.

    $50 for AHS members, $60 for nonmembers. Register at https://ahsgardening.org/behind-the-scenes-garden-tour-bedrock-gardens/

  • Saturday, July 22, 10:00 am – 11:30 am – Bedrock Gardens

    Bedrock Gardens is a twenty-acre sculpture park, botanical garden, and cultural center, and also the private home of Jill Nooney and Bob Munger. It is situated on an abandoned dairy farm at 45 High Road in Lee, southern New Hampshire. It began as a private sanctuary, where Jill could experiment with garden design and fabricating outdoor art. It became a garden experience designed as a journey along a ¾ mile path with places to go, a path to get there, and many stops along the way, such as two long intersecting vistas, a pond, Tea House, 100-foot-long Wiggle Waggle (shown above), rock garden, GrassAcre (an acre of ornamental grasses), Torri, and Parterre garden. Many pieces of sculpture occur along the way, including some hung from the tree canopy and one under the water.

    The works are made predominantly from old farm equipment, disassembled and reconfigured. Historically, New Hampshire was a farming region and that forms the bedrock motif for much of the work. Equipment that may have worked this property appears again as art on the property. Rust is the color of dirt. Join The Cultural Landscape Foundation on Saturday, July 22 for a Garden Dialogue. Thanks to the generosity of our hosts and sponsors, tickets ($95) for Garden Dialogues are tax deductible and proceeds benefit the educational programs of The Cultural Landscape Foundation. Purchase online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/garden-dialogues-2017-bedrock-gardens-tickets-33820189096

  • Friday, September 25, 5:30 pm – Sculpture Show Preview Party

    The famed “Stone Show” formerly in Hardwick, Massachusetts, is expanding and moving to Tower Hill Botanic Garden to become “The Sculpture Show.” The show will be larger and more inclusive in every way, with contributions from more than a dozen skilled artists from throughout New England and New York. See stunning works in metal, wood, cast stone and carved stone, set amongst the incomparable beauty of Tower Hill’s exquisite gardens and woodland trails—especially breathtaking during the fall foliage season. The preview party and reception with the artists will be on Friday, September 25, beginning at 5:30pm. Buy Sculpture Show Preview Party tickets. $25 for Tower Hill Members, $30 for non members. Enjoy delicious hors d’oeuvre and a cash bar, and enjoy a guided tour of the show, as the lights are turned on for the first time to illuminate the sculptures for a spectacular effect. We’ll inform you about special related programming throughout this event. The show is co-sponsored by New England Garden Ornaments of Sudbury, Massachusetts, and by Shadows and Light, of Conway, Massachusetts.  The show continues and will be open through November 1, from 10 am – 5 pm, and open Wednesday evenings until 8 pm.

    Participating Artists I Artists Bios
    Tim deChristopher I James DiSilvestro
    Thomas Kellner I Wendy Klemperer (photo below)
    Jill Nooney I Morris Norvin
    Tom O’ Connell I Pat Plourde
    Joseph Wheelwright I Carl White
    Gampo Wickenheiser I Jerry Williams Jeane Wolfe