The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program kicks off in the Berkshires on Sunday, June 2, from 10 – 4, with two superior gardens.  Ticketing information may be found at www.gardenconservancy.org.
Under the Hemlocks, 258 Great Barrington Road
Housatonic, MA 01236-9773
The owners write: After a two-year absence from the Open Days program, this garden is ready to be shown again. The garden is maturing and ripening – taking on what it wants – where and when. We still have the basic structure in a wooded setting–a bowl, with a rock garden in the front and the Magnolia garden, with the pond and upper walk in the back, surrounded by many rhododendrons. Boulders are everywhere – such blessings. The many shrubs and trees we planted have grown and taken their places with grace and certainty. There are eleven Japanese maples–at least four varieties –with their graceful shapes and colors. The white Thalia daffodils look spectacular under three of these maples on the side garden. In the Fall, it is the blue Lobelia siphilitica under the same maples. The weeping pines are larger and even droopier. Different grasses and hostas are everywhere. Perennials do their thing: the blue/purple drift of phlox divaricata mingling with the tulips in Spring; the foxgloves popping up all over the upper back garden a little later. Primula Japonica put on a major display after the Spring bulbs die back. Then summer moves on apace, with lilies, including waterlilies in the pond making their appearance, culminating with the Fall display of full grown coleus, phlox, blooming Ligularia Desdemona, dahlias, grasses, Kirengeshomas, and brugmansias. Sculptures dot the garden here and there, also the unexpected. The garden has been featured in several magazines: Passport, Country Living Gardener, Country Gardens, and is one of the Great Gardens of the Berkshires, a recent book by Virginia Small and Richard Pomerantz. We have added a new garden–-the woodland walk–-a playground designed for our new grandson, complete with fire pit. People enjoy the natural flow and feel of this garden. Please feel welcome at Under the Hemlocks.

Good Dogs Farm—Maria Nation and Roberto Flores, dirtmeisters
334 West Stahl Road
Ashley Falls, MA 01257
The owners say: In the years since we were last open for the Garden Conservancy the gardens have undergone a major transformation. The madcap exuberance has been tamed. The perennials have given way to boxwood, yew, junipers and broad swaths of ground cover beneath clipped shapes. The palate is a more harmonious series of blues, greys and greens. Where once it was a riot of color, now it is a place for peace and contemplation; a place where the shadows and light are as much a part of the garden as the plantings themselves. The paths through the gardens still lead to the follies and eccentricities of the owners – the outdoor bake oven, the outdoor shower, the distant sleeping room, the Keep (a new viewing tower created by Grey Davis & Chase Booth), and the large vegetable garden contained by a rough cedar fence, etc etc. Now the paths also lead the wanderer to the mini donkeys and Haflinger horse, the new barn and paddocks, the farm that has replaced the wild meadow and a river walk carved from the bramble. And, of course, good dogs still live here – and sometimes they stay out of the garden. Our gardens have been featured in Cottage Living, Berkshire Living, The Litchfield Country Times, Oprah’s *O at Home*, Gardenista Daily, various catalogues and the books Great Gardens of the Berkshires and Jack Staub’s newest: Private Edens, published in the Spring of 2013. We look forward to seeing you.