Boston Flora

Tag: Thuya Garden

  • Thursday, September 6 – Sunday, September 9 – The Gardens of Bar Harbor and Mt. Desert Island

    Berkshire Botanical Garden invites you to join an exclusive tour to discover the gardens of Bar Harbor and Mt. Desert Island. Mt. Desert Island is considered one of Maine’s most revered summer resort islands where such towns as Bar Harbor, Seal Harbor and Northeast Harbor dot the area. A major aspect of Mt. Desert Island is nature and the cultivation of beautiful gardens. One person stands out for her highly talented contribution: the legendary landscape designer Beatrix Farrand, who summered at Bar Harbor for over half a century, creating over 60 gardens on the island. One of her greatest projects was the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden at Seal Harbor. Collections of plants from her Reef Point home can now be seen at the Asticou Azalea Garden and Thuya Garden, both at Northeast Harbor. Another Farrand garden can be found at her last home, Garland Farm, Salisbury Cove, now maintained by the Beatrix Farrand Society.  Trip highlights may be viewed at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/sites/default/files/BBG%20Bar%20Harbor%20Trip%20Highlights.pdf

  • Friday, August 20, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm – Northeast Harbor Gardens

    Since you already are up in Maine for the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller garden tour with Bonnie Drexler (see post below), stay a day and visit Northeast Harbor with Bonnie and The New England Wild Flower Society.  This tour, described below, is limited to 20 participants, and costs $30 for NEWFS members and $36 for nonmembers.  Register at www.newfs.org.

    The Asticou Azalea Garden and the Thuya Garden are linked by location as well as history. These complementary gardens were created by Charles Savage, a local innkeeper and self-taught landscape designer, who rescued plants from designer Beatrix Farrands’ abandoned estate in Bar Harbor to create the gardens along the north edge of Northeast Harbor. At the Asticou Azalea Garden, rhododendrons, mountain laurels, heathers and azaleas were planted to transform a swamp into a stroll garden with an Asian flavor. The water gardens of the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, Japan supplied the inspiration for Savages’s flowing Asian design.

    Farrand’s plants were also used to create Thuya Garden, where an overgrown apple orchard stood before. We climb a trail winding up the slopes of Eliot Mountain under towering spruce and cedar trees. Rustic cedar shelters provide rest stops with views of Northeast Harbor below. At the top, we enter the formal garden through a pair of carved wooden gates (below) featuring fiddlehead ferns, lady’s slipper orchids, frogs, iris, and owls among others. The two main formal borders are planted with drifts of perennials that range from warm to cool hues as you stroll by. A shallow reflecting pool, a hidden summer house, and giant garden urns punctuate the garden’s floral displays.