Boston Flora

Tag: Nantucket Open Day

  • Thursday, June 20, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm – Nantucket Open Day

    The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program continues on Thursday, June 20 in Nantucket.  They are proud to partner with Sustainable Nantucket to present this Open Day featuring six beautiful gardens between 10 – 4.  Begin at East Brick Garden at 93 Main Street, in town.  This garden is an explosion of playful color year round, featuring massive displays including hollyhocks, Casablanca lilies, and all sorts of annuals overflowing from every bed.  Lindsay Mohr is the garden designer, and she installs spectacular displays of perennials, annuals, and bulbs that delight the senses.  Stay on Main Street and visit the garden of Meredith Marshall, 141 Main Street. Enjoy the simple elegance of an historical town garden with climbing roses, picket fences, and beautiful open spaces.  Tucked away behind the historical George C. Gardner house on upper Main, you will find a beautiful herbaceous border with informal boxwood groupings accompanied by summer flowering perennials and bulbs.  The garden is a pleasure to view as you meander on the grass path that guides you around the back of the garden.  The private pool garden is protected by a wisteria covered pergola and flowering vines galore.  Here you can also enjoy collections of potted plants.

    The White Garden, 12 Coffin Street, is the former Quaker Meeting House, moved sometime after the turn of the century from the Sherburne area to its present location by Elmer Greene, a famous American portrait painter, whose passion was gardening.  In 1967 the property was purchased by David Halberstam, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and bestselling author.  David and his wife Jean made many notable additions to the garden over the years, including a koi pond and the sublime raised perennial garden.  The raised white garden is a beautiful collection of white flowers and complimentary textures.  The garden has just been renovated to increase sustainability and emphasize the garden ornaments collected by the owners.

    The history of the plantings at the Sussek Garden, 85 Main Street, is unknown.  What is known is that the first structure on the property, a workshop, was erected c. 1725. Eventually, a small house was built and, by 1795, was enlarged to the house it is today.  Thus it seems appropriate for the garden design to be of the ‘cottage style.’ By definition, a cottage garden is a place for the cultivation of flowers, vegetables, and small plants in the limited space provided by a small cottage.  In the heart of the historic district, this garden exhibits a profusion of plantings that typify that genre.  The plantings are not pretentious, but rather collections of beloved plants grown for their beauty and practical uses.  You will see heirloom white foxgloves grown from seeds from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, peonies, roses and herbs, all in a palate associated with historic New England cottage gardens.  On the opposite side of the garage there is a small garden with a brick path leading to a garden bench.  These plantings are more suitable for shade, with hosta and astilbe, all executed by garden designer Kristina Wixted.

    The final two gardens are Hillary Hedges Rayport’s Garden at 89 Main Street, featuring an informal parterre planted in quadrants with assorted heather, and a rose-covered garden house with views of the garden from the rear of the yard, and the Maclean Garden at 2 Spring Street, uniquely situated at the edge of the historic district and Consue Springs.  For maps and complete parking details, visit http://www.gardenconservancy.org/opendays/open-days-schedule/openday/725-nantucket-open-day. $5 per garden, children under 12 free.

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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.