Boston Flora

Tag: Nantucket Garden Tour

  • Wednesday and Thursday, July 23 & 24 – Nantucket Garden Festival

    The Nantucket Garden Festival highlights the unique and beautiful garden ecosystems on Nantucket and focuses on the importance of sustainability, conservation and gardening ethics for the long-term health of the island. The 2014 Garden Festival will emphasize the evolution of the Nantucket garden.

    Scheduled for July 23rd & 24th, the festival celebrates gardening through informative workshops, exquisite garden tours, children’s activities and an opening night party.

    The Nantucket Garden Festival benefits Nantucket Lighthouse School, an independent day school serving island children, pre-school through 8th grade. Founded in 1999, Nantucket Lighthouse School provides a developmentally appropriate education that engages the whole child – head, heart, and hand. The concept for the Nantucket Garden Festival was born out of the Lighthouse School’s unique curriculum and organic garden, which provides an outdoor, hands-on classroom for acquiring skills in everything from language arts to science and mathematics.

    The Festival kicks off a Wednesday, July 23 with a walking garden tour east of Main Street from 9 – 11, a plein air painting workshop from 9 – noon, a workshop in Fairy Garden Building from 10 – 12 (repeated Thursday,) and that night, from 6 – 9, A Garden Soiree, the opening night celebration, at the Middle Brick Garden, 95 Main Street. On Thursday, a walking garden tour from 9 – 11 covers gardens west of Main Street, a Printmaking Workshop with Bee Shay from 10 – 12, a Cisco Garden Bike Tour from 10 – 1, and from 3 – 5, a Moors End Farm Tour and CSA talk. All events are separately priced. For complete information visit http://nantucketgardenfestival.net/eventschedule/.

  • Thursday, June 21, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Open Days Garden Tour in Nantucket

    Explore seven private gardens on Nantucket, open to the public to benefit the Garden Conservancy and Sustainable Nantucket. No reservations required; rain or shine.  Special highlights include topiary lilac, a homemade greenhouse, a charming garden shed, and a copper-lined rill among the plants.  Begin at 11 Mill Street, where volunteers will be available to assist and answer questions, or see website, www.gardenconservancy.org,  for additional locations. Most gardens can be reached by walking or biking. $5 per garden. Please note that Moors End Farm, 40 Polpis Road, is also open on this date, offering plants and produce available for purchase (see proprietor Sam Slosek below – photo by Nicole Harnishfeger).

    11 Mill Street is old fashioned and whimsical.  Heathland Gardens at 131 Polpis Road abuts the Middle Moors with a peek at the harbor, and includes many perennial beds connected by stone walks.  Kathryn Young’s Secret Garden at 77 Polpis Road is hidden in the scrub oak and wild shrubbery, and contains five areas of perennials and roses.  The Morash Victory Garden at 41 Shawkemo Road has expanded several times during the past thirty years.  Today, two deer fences protect twenty raised beds.  The MacKenzie Garden at 35 India Street was designed by Nantucket landscape designer Lucinda Young in 2008, with garden designer Kristina Wixted collaborating on the choice of herbaceous flowering plants.  The Tristram Bunker House is nearly 300 years old and was originally located in Nantucket’s early harbor town of Sherburne.  It was moved to its present location (address will be disclosed through the Open Days Directory or at any of the other gardens open the day of tour) in 1756. The Twin Street Gardens at 1 Twin Street is a charming downtown garden behind large hedges.

     

  • Monday, September 24 – Wednesday, September 26 – Landscapes of Nantucket

    Join the Polly Hill Arboretum for this visit to our island neighbor to explore the Nantucket landscape.  While Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket share similar ecosystems, we will also discover some diffferences in the landscapes.  With the help of colleagues at the Nantucket Land Council, we will visit a few conservation properties and learn about land preservation on Nantucket. Downtown Nantucket is also home to some majestic street trees, including several American elms.  The trip will include a walking tour with Nantucket’s tree warden, to learn about the legacy of these historic trees.  Two private garden visits, arranged by the Nantucket Garden Club, are also included in the tour.  The tour price includes round trip airfare from Martha’s Vineyard to Nantucket via Cape Air, two nights at the Jared Coffin House, all ground transportation on Nantucket, and a $100 tax deductible contribution to the Polly Hill Arboretum.  $694 per person for queen sized bed (based on double occupancy), $660 per person for full sized bed (based on double occupancy), and $510 per person for room with one twin bed.  Tour is limited to 18 people, so sign up early by calling 508-693-9426, visiting www.pollyhillarboretum.org, or emailing karin@pollyhillarboretum.org.

  • Wednesday, August 11, 11:00 am – 4:30 pm – Annual Nantucket House and Garden Tour

    The Nantucket Garden Club hosts its Annual House and Garden Tour on Wednesday, August 11, from 11 – 4:30.  For more than fifty years, the tour has become the venue to have a glimpse of many historic and new homes and gardens on the island.  Each year a different neighborhood is selected, from ‘Sconset to Monomoy to Brant Point.  The 2010 venue is Cliff Road – Sherburne Turnpike.  Tickets are $40.  A shuttle bus to Cliff Road can be picked up at the Transportation Center on Washington Street. The Garden Club members provide exquisite flower arrangements to compliment the rooms in the homes.  The revenue from this major event supports the local community in conservation projects, local scholarships and provides funding for club educational programs and conference expenses.  For specific information about this year’s tour, you may call The Nantucket Visitor Center/Information Bureau at 508-228-0925, or The Nantucket Chamber of Commerce at 508-228-1700.  You may also call Vicki Livingstone at 626-233-8060, or log on to www.nantucket.org/gardenclub/.

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  • Friday, June 4, 5:30 – 8:00 – Preview Party at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, Boylston, Massachusetts

    Kick off the 25th Annual Tower Hill plant sale with Tower Hill’s  Preview Party Sale and Silent Auction, where you’ll have first pick from the outstanding collection of trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, herbs, “incredible edibles,” and Tower Hill grown plants, to name a few.  Sumptuous hors d’oeuvre by Peppers Catering, music and a silent auction of items with particular interest to gardening enthusiasts are a major part of the evening.   See www.towerhillbg.org for details. Sponsor tickets, $125 per person, and Patron tickets, $75 per person.  To reserve, call 508-869-6111 x 136, or you may buy tickets securely online at www.towerhillbg.org with your credit card.

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  • Thursday, June 25, 10 – 4 – Nantucket Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy is pleased to announce that, as part of the Nantucket Open Day on Thursday, June 25, the Nantucket Lightship Basket Museum/1820 Garden at 49 Union Street, Open Days visitors will be admitted free.  For more information on obtaining tickets, log on to www.gardenconservancy.org.

    11 Mill Street

    Old fashioned and whimsical describes this piece of Nantucket garden history perfectly. The rustic pergola at the rear of the garden provides a resting place for the eye. The perennial borders flowing out from either side of the pergola divide the space in a colorful and informal way. The garden is punctuated with important structural plants such as fruit trees (apple and plum), magnolias, and hedges of yew and rose of Sharon. The American pillar roses on the fence are spectacular specimens.

    44 Orange Street

    This is a work in progress and will not be fully designed until the house itself is renovated. There will be some exterior reconfiguring of the house and the gardens. As they are now, the gardens are for the pleasure of passers-by and the homeowners. The prior owner had a rose garden that she dearly loved and we have been maintaining it. We invite you back in future years when the gardens are fully developed. Until then, please enjoy the glorious views and work in progress.

    Hoffman Gampetro, 102 Orange Street

    The plantings of this garden move through the year as if set to music—for it is truly a four-season show of color, texture, and form. Ten years of collaborating with the gardener Marcus has packed every corner of the yard with individual interest, while maintaining a grand theme. The wild landscape is kept in check with selective weeding, artful pruning, and an approach that strays from the typical Nantucket look.

    Tristram Bunker House

    The Tristram Bunker House is nearly 300 years old and was originally located in Nantucket’s early harbor town of Sherburne. It was moved to its present location in 1756. At that time the site was outside of the town gates; now it is virtually lost in the midst of edge-of-town commercial Nantucket. Moving from six acres on Eel Point Road in 2006, the owner has made a new garden that has almost nothing to do with either the spirit of time or of place. Every blade of grass on what had been a totally grassed-over plot, was removed and graveled over. Taking advantage of a generous change in grade, two distinct areas were created. The upper level, partly terraced for table and chairs, and shaded by an enormous pear tree, is an escape from the sun, and is calm and green with a pretty Acer palmatum ‘Seiryu’, boxwoods, sarcococca, many hostas, and a profusion of spring bulbs and autumn colchicum amongst edgings of euphorbia, epimedium, and lady’s mantle. The lower level, long and narrow, is divided through its length by a copper-lined rill spilling out of an old stone basin at the edge of the stone wall that retains the upper level. On either side of the rill are beds of mostly high- and late-summer perennials, particularly helenium, echinacea, heuchera, more euphorbia, grasses, and many different hardy geranium cultivars. There are poppies for earlier summer. A short, sort of semi-woodland walk across the back of the house is full of tree peonies, hydrangeas, hostas, spring bulbs, enkianthus, boxwood, and yew, along with even more geraniums and other choice plants that will eventually form a groundcover amidst the gravel.

    Whitney Garden at Moors End, 19 Pleasant Street

    This Federal-style brick house and garden were built in 1829 by Jared Coffin. The current owner has been restoring the intricate patterns of boxwood that outline beds of old roses. Within the walled garden is an ornamental iron gazebo surrounded by hostas, lilies, rose of Sharon, Hibiscus syriacus, and white oak-leaf hydrangea.

    The Grieves Garden, 5 Mill Street

    A charming perennial border with a rose-covered cottage tucked in behind an eighteenth-century house which has been meticulously restored by a well-known architect.

  • Friday, May 29, 5:30 – 8:30 – Preview Party at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, Boylston, Massachusetts

    Kick off this year’s Tower Hill plant sale with Tower Hill’s annual Preview Party Sale and Silent Auction, where you’ll have first pick from the outstanding collection of trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, herbs, “incredible edibles,” and Tower Hill grown plants, to name a few.  This year, a collection of painted clay pots by various notable Massachusetts artists will be auctioned.  Bid on such items as private consultations for your garden with renowned horticulturists, sailing on Cape Cod Bay, professional tree services, Red Sox tickets, Nantucket Garden Club Tour tickets, Hanover Theatre tickets, Worcester Country Club golf outing, and planted decorative containers.  See http://www.towerhillbg.org for even more enticing items.  Individual tickets $25.  To reserve, call 508-869-6111 x 136, or you may buy tickets securely online at www.towerhillbg.org with your credit card.