Garden Tours New England Blog

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I think it was a record turnout for Mother’s Day at Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boylston, Massachusetts. The traffic was backed up at the entrance by one o’clock. But it was well worth the wait given the glorious weather.

Tower Hill was started in 1986 by the Worcester County Horticultural Society, the third oldest active horticultural society in the United States, after the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Horticultural Societies. For 150 years, the Worcester County Horticultural Society, which was started in 1842, held its flower shows and educational programs in downtown Worcester.

Then in the 1980′s, John Trexler looked at over twenty sites to find a new home for the society and found it at the Carter estate, whose owners wanted it to remain in its natural state, free from development. The society purchased the 132-acre property for $675,000 and moved to the site in 1987.

It’s now halfway through its fifty year development plan having completed its education and visitor center, various garden areas, and buildings that house plants over the winter: the Orangerie and the Limonaia. With its bucolic setting and views of Mount Wachusett and the Wachusett Resevoir, Tower Hill is a popular venue for weddings and other special events.

Lawn Garden

Displaying over 350 varieties of trees and shrubs, the two-acre lawn garden blends into the hillside and creates a natural privacy. For special events, it can accommodate up to 1200 people. When we visited, many of its 6,000 spring bulbs were in bloom.

Some of the garden’s distinctive trees include witch hazel trees that provide color in January and February with their pink or white blooms. There’s the ginkgo tree that is the oldest cultivar in the U.S. The seven son flower tree is a Cary Award winner that features fragrant white blossoms in August and leaves that turn purple for the fall.

The Cary Award commemorates the work of Edward A. Cary, a nurseryman who was known for his unusual collection of plants that most people believed could not survive the harsh New England winters. When he died in 1987, he left his estate in Shrewsbury to the Worcester Horticultural Society. Ten years later, the Society created the Cary Award for Distinctive Plants in New England to promote the cultivation of under used plants that Edward Cary admired.

Like any other garden, Tower Hill has its pests to contend with. When the deer began feasting on their Weeping Alaskan Cedar trees, the staff sprayed the branches with garlic water as well as hanging tubes of garlic water from the branches. It seems to have worked.

Secret Garden

The brick walkway leads to two pergolas at the southern end of the lawn garden, overlooking the Secret Garden below. Meant to titillate the senses, this sunken garden laid out in semi-circle form has statues representing the four seasons, a ram’s head fountain spewing water into a pool, a variety of fragrant and colorful herbaceous plants across the seasons, and stone benches on which to sit and take it all in.

Down the hill from here is an apple orchard with 119 varieties of trees, some of the oldest being the Benoni apple tree from 1832 as well as the Pumpkin Russet. You can taste many of these rare varieties at Tower Hill’s harvest festival in October.

Leaving the Secret Garden and walking up the east side of the lawn garden, you come upon the vegetable garden managed by Dawn Davies who offers visitors a complete list of vegetables grown here. In summer, the archway is covered by two prolific Isis cherry tomato plants producing more than 6,000 tomatoes!

Limonaia, Winter Garden, and Orangerie

A path from the vegetable garden brings you to the Limonaia or Lemon House, an indoor garden with a greeting over the doorway, “Festina Lente” – or make haste slowly, which was a popular refrain of John Trexler’s. The exolite glazing covering the arched wooden beams controls the amount of heat and light that enters the building. The Limonaia, whose plants adorn the Winter Garden courtyard during the warm weather, is also an area for social functions.

Exiting the Limonaia, you enter the Winter Garden, which is reminiscent of an Italian garden with twin bronze turtle fountains spouting water into the rectangular pool. The turtles were specially created for Tower Hill by the New York City sculptor Priscilla Deichmann. In winter, this protected garden area showcases trees and shrubs that thrive in winter and are joined by warm weather plants from the Limonaia and Orangerie in summer. A semi-circle of Knock Out rose bushes form the western boundary of this garden. Future plans for the west side of this garden include a restaurant overlooking gardens and orchards.

The Orangerie, which forms the north boundary of the winter garden, greets you with a Latin saying meaning “If there is heaven on earth , this is it.” Need one say more about this 18th century style greenhouse that must be a glorious respite in winter.
On leaving the Orangerie, children delight in the porous volcanic-like stone fountain that sprays a light mist on those nearby and is home to many mosses that like the moist environment. It’s actually Castilia Stone, a sedimentary rock from farm fields once part of Lake Erie in Sandusky County, Ohio.

Systematic Garden and Pliny’s Allee

This fountain overlooks the Systematic Garden featuring 26 plant families with each bed showing specimens from the oldest in New England to the newest. Did you know that the Rosaceae family includes strawberries and raspberries as well as roses?
Protecting the Systematic Garden on the east side is Pliny’s Allee, a grassy avenue flanked by trees, planted in memory of a sergeant killed in World War II. This allee leads to a fountain as well as the Belvadere Overlook where you can enjoy views of Mount Wachusett and the Wachusett Reservoir.

That was enough for me to enjoy this day, but other areas to explore on future visits include the Wildlife Garden and a 1 mile-long Loop Trail that leads you to the Inner Park and Wildlife Refuge Pond as well as the Folly and The Moss Steps. I also plan to attend some of the many events and workshops that are offered here year round.

And many thanks to my husband and son for treating me to this lovely day!

On April 5th at a meeting of the Amherst Garden Club in New Hampshire, Rich Pomerantz gave a lively overview of how anyone can take great garden photographs. With digital cameras, it’s easy to rely just on auto mode to take pictures – I’m guilty of this even when I know if I made a few adjustments my pictures would often be so much better. By paying attention to lighting and composition as well as camera settings, Rich showed us the difference between so-so pictures and ones that can make an audience gasp with delight.

Rich Pomerantz’s major focus in photography centers on his interests in gardens and farms, and often extends to include people and their lives. He has published books, such as Great Gardens of the Berkshires, and his photos have appeared in several magazines including Garden Design, Yankee Magazine, and National Geographic. He also offers workshops on photography in New York City and in New England.

A very down-to-earth person, Rich has a keen eye for beauty in sometimes unexpected places and a talent for capturing that beauty in photography. It’s often a matter of finding the right combination of light and view point for a particular moment and tweaking your camera settings to capture that moment most effectively.
Here are some of the valuable pointers he gave us to improve our pictures:

• Know how your camera works – the use of the aperture setting and shutter speed

  Aperture
  One of the most important settings is the depth of field – what will be in focus in the photograph. This is controlled by the aperture or f-stop setting. The aperture is the opening in the lens through which light passes. The higher the f-stop setting, the smaller the aperture (and less light), and the deeper the depth of field. So with an f-stop setting of f/22, everything will be sharp and in focus.

  But sometimes you want to focus on a particular feature such as dew drops on a leaf. In this case, you want a lower f-stop to a setting such as f/2.8, thus a larger aperture (and more light), and a shallower depth of field.

  Shutter Speed
  When you have a smaller aperture such as f/22, less light is coming through to the camera. So the camera or the photographer has to compensate by using a longer shutter speed to get the light needed to capture a picture. If the shutter speed is 1/30 of a second or slower, you will need to use a tripod to prevent a blurry photo.

  With a lower f-stop such as f/2.8, the camera is getting plenty of light, so it will use a faster shutter speed such as 1/250 of a second.

• Select the right light or make the best use of the light available. Light has intensity, color, and direction.

  Intensity
  In general, soft, overcast days are best for photos because the light is diffuse and has a low intensity, offering a broader range of tonality. So in close-ups of a flower, you will see more detail.

  On a bright, sunny day, the light is more intense and hard. There’s more contrast between the lightest and darkest areas of the picture; therefore, you will see less detail. You can use this light to create a cartoon-like effect in the photo where the color range is very limited.

  Color
  In terms of color, you want to seek the “magic light”, which is generally at sunrise and sunset, when the sun is further away and shining at an angle creating a light that is warm and soft. By 11:00, the sun is overhead and the light is more direct making the colors harsher. You can see the difference in photos taken in the morning versus high noon in the reds, purples, and blues.

  Direction
  In general, you don’t want to shoot into the light because the light hitting the lens can create artifacts such as a halo that you might not want. In this case, you can use a lens shade or your hand to shield the lens. However, you can make the best of bright light by having the light behind a subject, such as a sunflower or fall foliage, to create a translucent or silhouette effect.

  You can also use a reflector to lighten the part of the subject that is not getting direct light. I think we’ve all had that family photo where the light in back is so bright that we can’t make out anyone’s faces because it’s so dark in front. In this case, you can place a reflector is front of them so the light behind them will bounce off of the reflector and fill the front with light.

  These reflectors come in various shapes and sizes. They are easily folded and come in white, silver, or gold. You can also use what you have available at the time such as a white shirt or page of a newspaper or even a white car.

• Compose your picture

  Rich says the best way to improve your photos is through composition. Really pay attention to what is in your viewfinder. Very often, just by getting closer to your subject or scene, you create a better picture. Also, turning your camera vertically can help you create better compositions.

  Use leading lines, such as fences and pathways, to lead the viewer into your photo, starting with a focal point such as a statue in the corner.

  You can frame a subject by shooting through a doorway or creating a frame with the branches of a tree.

  There’s also the well-known rule of thirds when composing your picture. Adjust your camera so you can see three equal areas of your photo through the viewfinder, both horizontally and vertically. Place your subject at the intersection of two of these areas.

  Look for patterns, shapes, and silhouettes to create interest.

Like with any endeavor, photography requires concentration or focused attention to get results that are a notch or two above the ordinary. So grab your camera and shoot for the extraordinary!

And if you would like to take a workshop with Rich, see his list of workshops at www.richpomerantz.com/workshops.

I’m happy to introduce you to a new section of this website – Public Gardens in New England. Until I started researching this topic, I never realized just how many gardens are open to the public in the New England area. It could easily take someone several years to see them all.

We are truly blessed with a wide variety of superb gardens that range from the large estates, such as Blithewold in Rhode Island, to botanical gardens, such as Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, to smaller delightful gardens, such as Tarbin Gardens in New Hampshire. Stockbridge in western Massachusetts is chock full of gardens including the Berkshire Botanical Gardens as well as those at the estates of Naumkeag and Chesterwood. Connecticut is a mecca for historic gardens, such as those at the Bellamy-Ferriday House and the Glebe House, and a destination for spectacular gardens, such as the one at the Hollister House. In Vermont, Goddard College has restored their Greatwood Gardens that were started in 1918 and opened them to the public.

To get this section underway, I’ve started with several gardens for each state, providing a brief description for each one. As with the garden tours and events that we list, we have provided a map to see where all the public gardens are located. Some of these gardens I’ve visited in the past and have provided a link to either my photo gallery or blog for further information. I hope to visit many more of them in the coming months and will add more information and photos as I visit them.

I will also be adding to the list of gardens each month as time allows and hope this section will encourage people to visit these gardens, many of which are on our doorstep! Also, write to me with additional information for the gardens listed or suggestions on gardens to add based on your experiences. I would love to hear from you!

Sunday, March 4th was a fine day for driving down to see the Worcester Flower & Patio Show after a week of snowy weather. At the entrance were the winning flower arrangements of the show’s competition as well as this wonderful Cinderella carriage.

The focus of the displays inside was on patios and all that you can do with that space. Patios certainly have come a long way from when I was growing up.

Now you can have fireplaces, grills, hot tubs, comfortable dining areas as well as waterfalls and ponds.
Surrounding these are tastefully landscaped areas with shrubs, trees, perennials, and spring bulbs.

There’s no doubt these can add a great deal of value to a home if you can afford it.

The focus of the talks, however, was more on gardens and flower arranging, which were more my interest for attending.

Lecture: Top Perennial Picks by Season – Kerry Mendez
Kerry Mendez, who lives in Ballston Spa, New York, specializes in creating organic, low maintenance gardens (www.pyours.com). Her garden at home covers a quarter of an acre and she makes the most of that space by having plants that offer not just color in spring, summer, or fall but also display interesting foliage when they’re not in bloom or provide groundcover to suppress weeds.

She gave us a list of 54 perennials that pack a punch for a garden, large or small, and generally can be found at your local nursery. She managed to present more than half of these in the time allotted. Here are ten that I thought were interesting:

Siberian Bugloss (Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’); part shade/shade; spring bloomer; 12” tall; deer resistant; Zones 3. This is the 2012 Perennial of the Year. It has blue flowers and leaves that resemble hosta, which last through the fall.

Fern-Leaved Bleeding Heart (Dicentra ‘King of Hearts’); part sun/shade; spring bloomer; 8-10” tall; deer resistant; Zone 5. This actually blooms through the fall and is deer resistant. It has frosty blue leaves and looks good with hosta and Japanese Forest Grass.

Intersectional Peony (Paeonia ‘Bartzella’); sun/part sun; spring bloomer; 30-36” tall; deer resistant; Zone 4. A hybrid of a tree peony with a traditional peony, this is easier to grow than a tree peony. Its flowers are the colors of those found in tree peonies, but holds up better in the snow than a tree peony.

Woods Phlox (Phlox divaricata ‘Louisiana Blue’); sun/part shade; spring bloomer; 12” tall; deer resistant; Zone 3. This is a highly fragrant plant that when it is done blooming, the thick and overlapping leaves suppress weeds.

Purple Poppymallow (Callirhoe involucrata); sun; summer bloomer; 6-12” tall; Zone 4. This plant, which is drought tolerant, has a carrot tap root that sends out three long stems with mallow-like flowers. Because it is also heat resistant, it can easily cascade over retaining walls, stone walls, and paving stone in full sun. It can also be used in window boxes and hanging planters.

Coneflower (,Echincea ‘Tiki Torch’ ‘Sunrise’, ‘Fatal Attraction’); sun/part sun; summer bloomer; 26-36” tall; deer resistant; Zone 4. These varieties are top for hardiness and branching, and bloom into the fall. While most coneflowers don’t overwinter well, these do. Other varieties are ‘Green Jewel’, which is better than ‘Green Envy’, and ‘Milkshake’, which is white.

Fleeceflower (Persicaria ‘Firetail’); sun/part sun; summer-fall bloomer; 36-48” tall; Zone 4. This is a very popular plant with bright pink flowers. It blooms from July to early November and requires no deadheading! The green leaves turn to yellow in the fall. It is good for pollinators, especially bees. Pair with coneflowers and the geranium ‘Rozanne.’

Speedwell (Veronica ‘Eveline’); sun; summer bloomer; 20” tall; deer resistant; Zone 4. Its flowerheads, which go from a white tint to purple as it grows, are larger than those of other speedwell varieties. It is good for viewing from a distance. Deadhead to prolong blooming.

Daylily (Hemerocallis ‘Going Bananas’); sun/part sun; 19-22” tall; summer-fall bloomer; Zone 3. This is an improved variety of ‘Happy Returns’ and is the best repeat bloomer. It has more flowers per stem than other varieties.

Yarrow (Achillea ‘Pomegranate’); sun; 24” tall; summer bloomer; deer resistant; Zone 3. This has top rating for the best red flowers and stiff stems. It is tightly mounded and has repeat blooms into the fall.

Kerry has written two books:
· The Ultimate Flower Gardener’s Top Ten Lists – 70 Garden-Transforming Lists, Money Saving Shortcuts, Design Tips & Smart Plant Picks for Zones 3-7
· Top Tens for Beautiful Shade Gardens – 52 Garden-Transforming Lists for Smart Plant Picks, Design Tips & Garden Shortcuts.
Both these are available at her website and on other bookseller sites, such as Amazon.
I also covered Kerry’s presentation at the Boston Flower Show last year in my blog.

Lecture: How to Build a Pond and Waterfall – Mark Packard
Mark Packard, of Sterling Greenery in Sterling, Massachusetts, is the number one supplier of ponds in New England. He started the presentation by answering common concerns about having a pond or waterfall on your property.

What about mosquitoes?
Mosquitoes only lay eggs in stagnant water. With Mark’s ponds the surface is always moving because of the filtration system. Also, if you have fish, they eat the larvae. Waterfalls attract natural wildlife and predators of mosquitoes, such as hummingbirds and dragonflies.

How deep should it be so it doesn’t completely freeze?
Two feet; the ground at two feet is 48 degrees. With two feet of water there will be 8” of ice.

What happens to the fish in winter?
Fish stay in the pond all winter and go into hibernation – they don’t eat.

How much electricity will it use?
For a waterfall, $10-12 per month.

How big should it be?
Make it as large as possible because more than half of the owners with ponds wish they had made it larger.

Ponds used to be made with preformed liners with pumps at the bottom. These were high maintenance and were artificial looking. The pump would get clogged and then be covered with algae so it had to be cleaned constantly.

Ponds and waterfalls are now made with 45 mil. flexible liners and a filtration system that is designed not to clog. The cost of running the filtration system is about $15 per month at 2000 GPH (gallons per hour).

You want to create a pond and/or waterfall that is part of a balanced ecosystem – be low maintenance and work with nature. The fish eat algae then the fish waste turns into nitrates that feed the plants. The plants should cover no more than 30% of the pond.

In terms of maintenance, a pondless waterfall only requires an hour per year. An 11′ x 16′ pond requires about ten hours per year of maintenance.

Mark offers a workshop for customers to show them how they can install the pond and waterfall themselves rather than pay for installation. He says homeowners can often complete the installation of an 8′ x 11′ pond with waterfall in half a day.

Also, I discovered when I visited his website that he is offering a pond and garden tour on June 23rd. See his website www.sterlinggreenery.com for more details.

Lecture: Tips to be Successful With Your Own Flower Arrangements – Sally Jablonski
Sally Jablonski, of Herbert Berg Florists in Worcester, Massachusetts, created three flower arrangements while sharing tips for assembling and caring for the final product. Some of these tips included:

• Make sure the oasis foam has holes so the water travels to the stems faster
• Cut stems at an angle – this makes them more secure in the foam and the water travels faster through the stem
• Place an inch of stem in the foam making sure you have removed leaves
• Tropical stems last three weeks to a month
• You can grow curly willow in your yard and use the branches in arrangements
• To customize a container, you can wrap some ribbon around it, attaching it to the container with sticky dots
• For a dramatic effect, place submersible colored lights in the container with the stems. These lights can last up to 14 hours and more.
• A new way to add color to an arrangement is to insert colored wire in the foam with the stems
• To keep an arrangement fresh, change the water everyday and recut stems.

Lecture: Organic Fertilizers – Kevin Richardson
Kevin Richardson is one of the managing members of a product called Organic Plant Magic, which is an organic plant food and fertilizer. What I found interesting in Kevin’s lecture is that it is not enough to put nutrients into the soil such as dried blood or bone meal. The soil needs microorganisms that will eat and digest the nutrients. The microorganisms produce waste that is in a form that is more useful to plants not only to nourish them but to protect them from pests. See their website for more information on how to use what promises to be an amazing product.

Photo gallery
Eager to enjoy flowers other than what’s in the supermarkets, I visited the Lyman Estate Greenhouses in Waltham, Massachusetts to see their camellias that are now in full bloom. Amazingly, the camellia house dates back to 1820 when Boston’s elite could afford to enjoy floral blooms in the middle of winter. It is not a large collection with just over a dozen camellias. However, some of the camellias are over a hundred years old, which makes them quite special.

In addition to the camellia house, there are other plants in bloom, such as brilliant fuschia bougainvillea and azaleas, in the three grape houses and the orchid house. Beautiful and unusual orchids are also sprinkled liberally throughout the greenhouses.

As I was leaving, I noticed a flowering cactus called the Crown Thorn, which I had never seen before. Apparently, it is the most commonly grown succulent known as Euphorbia milii, or Christ plant, and is a native of Madagascar. The one I saw was at least two feet tall and can grow to three feet in height. Its sharp spines are an inch long. However, it’s most captivating feature, I think, are its glorious clusters of pink blossoms, known as bracts.

The greenhouse also has a shop with plants for sale as well as books, gardening supplies and decorations. Overall, the visit took about a half hour. It is worth stopping by if you are in the Waltham area. However, if you are coming from a distance, it would be better to try to arrange a tour of the Lyman mansion as well.

This year marked the tenth anniversary of the Flora in Winter event at the Worcester Art Museum. As part of this event, several special festivities and lectures were offered to the public. One of these events was a floral demonstration by Ann McDevitt, a Scottish floral designer who owns and operates her own business Flowers from the Heart in Sutton, Massachusetts.

From the start, Ann regaled and delighted her audience with her Scottish humor and stories of her adventures as a floral designer over the past twenty years. She came to floral design later in life, taking night classes in her native Scotland. She has competed in many competitions and flower shows across Britain, winning several first, second, and third place prizes. Most notably, she has designed flower arrangements for Queen Elizabeth II and the late Princess Diana. These experiences led to invitations to give workshops across Britain, Europe, and the United States.

In her demonstration at the Worcester Art Museum, Ann took us on a tour of Ireland, Spain, Russia, and Tunisia through her floral arrangements. Although Ann is Scottish, her mother was from Ireland and she took Ann and her siblings to Ireland to visit when they were children. As Ann told us about these trips, she put together an asymetrical arrangement of myrtle, Bells of Ireland, green tea roses, and white mums evoking the feeling of Ireland.

Ann explained that one of the differences between the floral competitions in Great Britain and the United States is that in Britain there are twenty entries per class whereas in the U.S. there are four.

At one of the competitions, she met Julia Clements, also known as Lady Seton, who is considered the founder of floral arranging. Lady Seton, who died last year at the age of 104, was a writer and public speaker who promoted floral arranging to the women of Britain after World War II as a way to lift their spriits and bring beauty into their homes during a time of austerity and rationing. Amazingly, she had had no previous experience other than a memory of floral arrangements she had seen on a visit to the States.
In the early 1990′s, Ann also met Nina Losolivia, the President of the Russian Flower Arranging Clubs, at a national competition and was subsequently invited to come to Russia to give workshops. After the bleakness of daily life in the Soviet Union, the Russian women were enthusiastic about flower arranging and eager to learn as much as they could from Ann. As a thank you gift, Ann was presented with a samovar, which is a Russian tea urn.
Using this samovar, she created her next arrangement with a Russian theme in a Hogarth’s Curve design, which is “S” shaped. This arrangement consisted of myrtle, red and pink roses, and orchids.
Next, Ann took us to Spain. The horizontal arrangement of oranges, yellows, greens, and purples was created with dressina, ming fern, leucadendron, calla lillies, delphiniums, and spectacular orange roses known as “Voodoo”.

Then we were off to Tunisia, which Ann visited on a vacation. She went to a souk, or marketplace, where she came across some birdcages that she knew she could use in a floral arrangement. They were too expensive for her budget, but the woman merchant made a deal with Ann by looking in Ann’s purse and taking her cosmetics as payment! For the floral arrangement, Ann attached the flowers to the top of the birdcage. A combination of purple singapore, white narcissus called entropia, and pink stephanotis nicely draped over the side of the birdcage.

The two-hour demonstration ended with a show-stopping traditional triangle arrangement. Easily three feet high, the arrangement included esperance roses (pink and cream combination), purple stock, pink carnations, and purple delphiniums. An arrangement fit for a queen! While assembling this arrangement, Ann talked about meeting Queen Elizabeth, who she says is barely over five feet tall, quite small for someone with such an imposing presence. She said that when the queen or Princess Diana wanted flowers from her, it would be one of the ladies in waiting who would call. She did receive wonderful handwritten thank you letters from Princess Diana who Ann said was a truly warm human being.

I was so impressed with the time and energy Ann put into this demonstration. She had spent the better part of the previous week going to the market in Boston to buy flowers, preparing and preserving the flowers for each arrangement, and then setting up for the demonstration. Ann is in her seventies, but she could easily outdo many half her age in energy and vitality. She donated her time to the museum for this event and we were the richer for it . If you ever get the chance to see Ann giving a demonstration, I encourage you to go – you’ll have a great time!

On Saturday the 21st, I went to the Toadstool Bookstore in Peterborough, New Hampshire to hear Jane Roy Brown discuss a book she coauthored with Susan Haltom called One Writer’s Garden. It’s about Eudora Welty’s garden at her home in Jackson, Mississippi and how this garden inspired and influenced her writing.

Eudora Welty wrote numerous short stories and novels about the American South and won many awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Medal of the Arts. Some of her most well known works include the short story collections A Curtain of Green and The Golden Apples. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Optimist’s Daughter in 1972.

She was born in 1909 and grew up in a house on North Congress Stree in Jackson with her parents Chestina and Christian Welty and her two younger brothers Edward and Walter. Then in 1923, her parents built a large Tudor Revival home on Pinehurst Street in Belhaven, the first suburb of Jackson. It was built when Jackson’s population was growing rapidly and the extension of trolley lines made it possible to live further out from the city. Not that the Weltys needed the trolley since they were of the minority that owned a car. Christian was vice-president of an insurance company.

Even before they moved into the house, Chestina was envisioning and planning their garden. She designed and planted the garden over a number of years primarily between 1923 and 1940. Her garden design was inspired by the Colonial Revival style popular in the 1920′s, which emphasized square or rectangular beds, straight pathways, and floral borders enclosed by hedges, arbors, and trellises. It created the effect of outdoor rooms as an extension of the home. A good example of this in New England is the garden at the Hamilton House in South Berwick, Maine, which I visited last July.

Chestina was influenced by garden writers of the time such as Helena Rutherford Ely who advocated gardening as a way to improve physical and mental health at a time when there were rapid technological developments and the pace of daily life was becoming hectic. Chestina learned a great deal from books and belonged to local woman’s clubs and garden clubs, which she often started or headed.

She was part of a movement at that time in which women started garden clubs as an outlet not only for their interest in gardens, but as a way to contribute to civic life. They spearheaded efforts to beautify rapidly growing suburbs by getting city officials to build parks and line city streets with trees. On their own, they often planted flowers and shrubs in median strips.

The book does an excellent job of describing the social history of the early twentieth century with an emphasis on the development of gardening, garden clubs, and the effect of the times on women and families. This is interwoven with the story of how Chestina developed the garden and involved Eudora in her gardening endeavors. Chestina imparted her considerable knowledge of botany and gardening to Eudora, who in turn used this knowledge to enhance character descriptions in her stories.

During the Depression, Eudora worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as a reporter writing news stories and taking pictures for county papers throughout Mississippi. From this experience came the novel Losing Battles in which she used her knowledge of plants to describe the life of her poverty-stricken characters. For example, the flowers that grew around the modest home of the family in the novel were cannas, montbretias, red salvia, lemon lilies. The mix of hot colors of red, orange, magenta, and yellow as well as the fact that the cannas were grown in rows (“like the Walls of Jericho”) suggest an uneducated eye. The plants were inexpensive, but hardy and required little care. Cheap morning glory vines provided shade for the porch and sections of concrete pipe were used as planters for verbena. Although the family is poor, their garden evokes a feeling of abundance, which is reflected in the richness of their family life.

One Writer’s Garden also provides examples of Eudora’s references to her garden and plants in her correspondence to friends who shared her interest in gardening. Most of the examples come from letters to her friend and agent Diarmuid Russell and to John Richardson with whom she had a romantic relationship until the 1950′s. The examples show how much the garden meant to her, providing comfort and solace during some very difficult times, such as during World War II and when her mother became ill after the war.

As Chestina became more infirmed during the 50′s and 60′s (she died in 1966) and Eudora traveled more for her career, the garden fell into disrepair. By the 1990′s, the garden in its original form was unrecognizable.

In 1994, Susan Haltom met Eudora and received her permission to restore the garden. Although Susan had some help, she did most of the restoration herself, sometimes digging as much as a foot deep to find the original bricks of the garden path! Susan gathered most of the information she needed to restore the garden from interviews with Eudora as well as from Chestina’s garden journals and Eudora’s photographs of the garden in the 1930′s. The Garden Conservancy also guided Susan in preserving the garden accurately. In 2001, Eudora died at age 92. The garden was opened to the public in 2004.

The peak months for visiting the Welty home and garden are March and April when many of the plants are in bloom, especially the camelias, which were Eudora’s favorite. There are also many varieties of roses, which were Chestina’s favorite. Many beautiful color photographs of these plants and more can be seen throughout the book, which also includes photos of Eudora, her family, and friends.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in gardening or Eudora Welty or both! I plan on reading more of her stories to understand how her passion for gardening infused her writing and to just enjoy her storytelling. And it sure would be wonderful to visit her home and garden in Jackson, Mississippi. Someday soon I hope.

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I took advantage of the continuing marvelous summer weather at the beginning of this month to take a day trip to Eagle Island in Casco Bay, Maine. We set out on a little ferry with Portland Discovery Land & Sea Tours passing several islands, forts, lighthouses, and the occasional seal or porpoise along the way. Eagle Island was the summer retreat for Admiral Robert Peary and his family from the early 1900′s to the mid 1950′s. Admiral Peary, as you may know, was the first explorer to reach the North Pole arriving on April 6, 1909.

When I signed up for this tour, I expected to walk the trails around the island and tour his house, which has been lovingly restored by the Bureau of Parks and Lands, the Friends of Peary’s Eagle Island, and grants from various Maine foundations. What I didn’t expect to find were gardens. These were the gardens of Josephine Diebitsch Peary, his wife, and Marie Peary Stafford, his daughter.

Josephine Diebitsch Peary was an accomplished woman in her own right. She was valedictorian of the business school she attended which led to working at the Census Bureau In Washington, D.C. When her father became ill, she took over his position at the Smithsonian until she became engaged to Robert Peary in 1886. After their marriage, she supported his efforts to reach the North Pole and accompanied him on his first two expeditions. On the second expedition, she gave birth to their daughter, Marie, who was nicknamed Snow Baby by the Eskimos (and later the press) who had never seen an infant so white.

In their day, the gardens were full of annuals as well as perennials. Now there are only perennials, which of course do not need to be replanted each year. Both Josephine and Marie kept notes that allowed staff to recreate the gardens, with many of the original hydrangea and foxglove surviving. The park manager for Eagle Island maintains these gardens as her time allows.

Both Josephine’s and Marie’s gardens included perennials such as roses, peonies, foxglove, iris, bleeding heart, hollyhock, and poppies. Foxglove was Josephine’s favorite and can be found all over the island. Her garden also included Sweet William, heliotrope, rebrum lily, feverfew, phlox, asters, Bachelor’s button, and hydrangeas.

Marie’s garden included Canterbury bells, lupine, Widow’s Tears, ageratum, morning glories, and Butter-and-Eggs. I had never heard of Butter-and-Eggs, but apparently it is resembles a snapdragon, but is larger with petals that go from pale yellow to a bright orange-yellow.

When I visited, there weren’t many blossoming plants outside of phlox and hydrangeas being so late in the season. When the family resided here, there were also lots of raspberry bushes from which Josephine made many jars of jam and cordial each year.

I think it would be an interesting project for a local garden club or clubs to restore these gardens to their original glory. Celia Thaxter’s garden on Appledore Island, Maine in the Isles of Shoals comes to mind where local gardening clubs and volunteers have spent the past thirty years or more restoring her garden. The difficulty, of course, is transportation. The club members would need access to a boat to take volunteers to the island. In general, boats are only allowed to moor for a few hours, but maybe an exception could be made for a project like this.

I highly recommend a day trip to Eagle Island. The house is chock full of history with displays of artifacts connected with Peary’s travels, his family, and life on this island. You can tour the house at your own pace with the aid of a portable audio tour. There are also docents on hand to answer questions.

I know I will be returning since two hours was not enough to take in all the history as well as walk around the island. As you can imagine, the views from the island are idyllic. During a hike, you can enjoy a picnic lunch at many areas on the island. I particularly enjoyed the small beach at the far end of the island. This island trip was a gem!