Boston Flora

Tag: Tristram Bunker House

  • 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.

     

  • 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.