Garden Tours New England Blog

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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 Boris Yeltsin 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!

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It is believed that the garden at the Old Manse was a wedding present from Henry David Thoreau to Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. Planted in 1842, it has been a continuously cultivated garden for nearly 170 years!

I attended the garden tour, talk and afternoon tea at the Old Manse in Concord with a friend on yet another beautiful summer afternoon. Hasn’t the weather been glorious this summer?

Alec Ellsworth, a young farmer who is in charge of the Old Manse garden, along with Prentis Crosier, a guide and historian at the Old Manse, together led the talk and discussion about the history and current running of the farm.

Prentis told us that Hawthorne and his wife came directly to the Old Manse on July 9th in 1842 from their wedding in Boston. Given that Hawthorne was one of the leaders in the Transcendentalist movement, which promoted the idea of living in harmony with nature, a garden was the perfect wedding gift.

In 1843, Hawthorne expanded the garden to a quarter of an acre. He grew vegetables while
Sophia focused on the flowers. The vegetables grown here were typical of what is still grown in New England: corn, potatoes, squash, pumpkins, beans, turnips, leeks, beets, carrots, melons, and herbs. Most unusual for that time, Hawthorne also grew tomatoes, which was generally believed to be poisonous, possibly because it is a member of the nightshade family.

The corn, squash, and beans were, and still are, grown together following the tradition of the Native Americans. The beans supply nitrogen to the soil, while the corn provides support for the beans and shade for the squash.

He also grew rhubarb and asparagus. In the mid 1800s, Concord was an agricultural center with rhubarb and asparagus being its main crops.

The Manse garden could feed eight families during the growing season from April to October, or four families for the whole year if the root vegetables were stored over the winter.

Today, most of the vegetables grown in the garden are heirloom varieties such as “Bloody Butcher” corn and “Cherokee Trail of Tears” beans. They also grow crops from hybrid seed mainly as part of their participation in the organization Gaining Ground, which is a farm based at the Thoreau Birthplace Property in Concord. It is a training ground for young farmers and supplies produce to local food pantries and food programs with the help of many volunteers.

Sophia grew flowers typical for this area: dahlias, zinnias, morning glories, Black-eyed Susans, statice, and nasturtiums. She also grew a few varieties of amaranth including “Love Lies Bleeding”. Did you know that amaranth is the most widely grown plant in the world? Apparently, it’s harvested for its nourishing grain.

The farm at the Old Manse also includes fruit trees. In Hawthorne’s time, there were apple, pear, peach, cherry, and currant trees. Today, all but cherry trees still grow here.

Hawthorne thought of the Manse as Eden with he and his wife as Adam and Eve. He would visit the garden a dozen times a day in the course of his writing. A place to soothe the soul and to inspire the spirit, I would imagine.

After the talk, a proper English afternoon tea was served complete with dainty crustless sandwiches, salad, scones, cookies, fruit, clotted cream, lemon curd, jam, and of course tea, both iced and hot. The site manager, Tom Beardsley, who is originally from Yorkshire, England, assured us that this was in the tradition of teas served by his mother and his aunt when he was growing up. So it was quite authentic. The tea was prepared and coordinated by a volunteer, Susan Adam, with the help of other volunteers. She laid the tables with some very nice French Limoges porcelain china that had been in storage at the Old Manse.

The Old Manse will be offering another garden tour, talk, and afternoon tea event in September. Call the Old Manse at 978-369-3909 for more information and to make reservations.

The Old Manse is located near the entrance to the Old North Bridge, which is part of the Minuteman National Park. You can also spend several days visiting other sites in Concord such as Orchard House, the Wayside, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the Concord Museum, and Walden Pond. Here you will learn about other writers and founders of the Transcendentalist movement including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Louisa May Alcott and her father Bronson Alcott.

For more information, visit the following websites:

Old Manse
Orchard House
The Old North Bridge and the Wayside
Concord Museum
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Walden Pond

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At Tarbin Gardens in Franklin, New Hampshire, you will see plants, shrubs, and trees that you may not see elsewhere in northern New England. Besides the amazing variety of flora, there’s also a wildness about these gardens that can make the selection and placement of plants and trees seem random.

But Richard Tarbin knows every plant and tree as you would know your own child or an old, dear friend – he’s known each one from their beginning. Trees that are now anywhere from 30 to over 80 feet tall now, Richard started from seedlings 25 years ago. He can tell you where he acquired the seedlings, how they’ve weathered harsh winters or hot summers, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and extol their unique beauty or lovable homeliness.

Did you know that magnolias, of which Tarbin Gardens has several varieties, when cut back severely, can grow back quickly because of their extensive root system? Around the corner from where we live, there is a large magnolia tree that puts forth beautiful pink blossoms in the spring. Several years ago, it suffered terribly in an ice storm. I thought for sure it was a goner and was saddened by the idea of no longer seeing that beautiful tree in bloom. But it has recovered and grown back amazingly well. Now I know why.

That’s what you experience on a garden tour with Richard Tarbin. He is not only enthusiastic about Tarbin Gardens, but loves to hear about your experiences of plants and trees, commiserate on the difficulties and share in the pleasures, and offer explanations for anything that puzzles you.

My husband commented later that he felt as if he weren’t even in New Hampshire as we toured the gardens. “It felt like stepping into another world.”

If that’s true, it’s the world of Richard Tarbin. A world he has been creating for over 25 years on his own and before that with his parents who bought the property in 1973. Out of 32 acres of woodland, he has created five acres of paradise. Besides having to clear land and dig out rocks and boulders, he has had to build up and enrich a clay soil that originally offered only an inch of covering.

There are currently over ten gardens that showcase plants and trees in a variety of conditions from full sun to full shade, from alpine to tropical. The alpine garden features minitature evergreens while the tropical house, an indoor botanical garden, contains an array of exotic plants. In the Catalpa garden a canopy of the Catalpa trees provide shade for a variety of plants such as Crown Imperials, foxgloves, campanulas,and magic lilies. The Sensory Garden adjoining the children’s play area allows children to experience plants up close. The gardens are balanced by three pond areas including a Koi pond complete with water lilies and a small waterfall.

The formal garden, originally created by his parents, has dramatic flora displays in large, decorative stone containers at one end leading to a grapevine-covered pergola at the other end. It is also the venue for weddings that are held throughout the summer. During our visit, large Oriental lilies in white and various shades of pink were in bloom in this garden as well as daylilies and astilbe. Stone planters in the middle of the garden held beautiful fuschias. Did you know they grow better in large containers offering a mix of sun and shade with moist, fertilized soil? They don’t last long in those hanging planters from the nursery, which dry out quickly.

Richard is constantly adding and extending gardens. One of the new gardens he is developing is at the entrance. The 60-foot raised bed border is in full bloom with a dazzling array of annuals: Zowie zinnias, Mexican sunflowers, castor bean, dahlias, salvia, marigolds, portulaca rose, and flowering tobacco.

His mother manages the English cream teas served in the Rose Garden patio. You can bring a picnic lunch to enjoy beforehand, and then indulge in the scones and pastries that come with a large pot of tea kept warm by knitted tea cozies, which you can also purchase.

These are gardens to return to throughout the spring and summer to experience the change in the landscapes as each plant and tree comes into bloom and the color of foliage changes. There are plenty of places to sit in each garden, which allows you to rest and simply take in all that your senses will allow. You’ll hear the sounds of birds as well as the exotic animals that reside here, including peacocks from India, guinea fowl and goats from Africa, and parakeets from South America. There’s also Scottish highland cattle that were instrumental in helping to clear that land as they apparently will eat anything including tree stumps!

You can easily make a day of visiting Tarbin Gardens, which seems to have enough variety to interest a wide range of visitors from young to old, garden enthusiast, or someone just looking to enjoy another world for a short while.

For more information, visit their website at TarbinGardens.com.

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Looking at this tranquil view of the Salmon Falls River, it’s hard to imagine the shore lined with busy wharves and tall masted ships sailing in and out of the harbor . Yet this was the scene in 1785 when Jonathan Hamilton built his house on this site. Since that time, the property has evolved from a busy commercial waterfront, to a working sheep farm, then a summer retreat, and finally an historic property for all to enjoy.

On the last Saturday of July, Gary Wetzel, landscape manager for Historic New England, led a tour of the gardens created in the early 1900′s by the last private owners, Emily Tyson and her stepdaughter, Elise Tyson. In 1996, Historic New England began restoration of these gardens.

Unlike Sarah and Dorothy Ogden of the Codman House, Emily and Elise did not keep a record of what was planted. Fortunately, Elise, who was an accomplished amateur photographer, took photos of the gardens and property, and from these the restoration staff could figure out not only what was planted, but also the design of the gardens. The gardens became quite famous in the 1920′s and were featured in several articles in House Beautiful, which the restoration staff have used to further their knowledge of the gardens.

The classical lines of the garden extended from a water trench that ran from the well to the house. The plantings consist mainly of peonies, globe thistle, Asian lilies, daylilies, phlox, nigella, and foxglove. The Tysons designed the gardens and the interior of the house with the help of Herbert Browne of the Boston architectural firm Little & Browne in the Colonial Revival style, which was popular at the time. Millstones throughout the garden reflect interest in Colonial times of which gristmills were an integral part.

In 2002, the garden arch was rebuilt using Elise’s photos. Finding the piers of the original arch allowed staff to place it in its original location.

Because Emily and Elise wanted to create a strong connection between the indoors and outdoors, the gardens were designed like a series of rooms. Trellises and a pergola surrounded the garden to create this effect. The pergola, which had fallen into disrepair, was torn down in the 1950′s after it was damaged in a hurricane. Historic New England hopes some day to raise funds to rebuild the pergola whose foundation stone work remains.

Today, the gardens at Hamilton House are lovingly cared for by devoted volunteers, Mimi Demers and Kathy Gray.

History

Jonathan Hamilton was a prosperous merchant by the mid 1780′s. Starting with selling fish and timber, he ventured into privateering during the American Revolution expanding his business to include shipbuilding, mills, and ownership of sugar plantations in the West Indies.

His base of operation was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1783, he purchased property upriver from Portsmouth at Pipe Stave Landing on the Salmon Falls River in Berwick, Maine. This parcel of land was previously owned by David Moore who had built a house, which later burned, as well as a wharf. It was an ideal location for loading and building vessels.

In 1785, Hamilton built a grand mansion from which he could oversee his shipping and business operations. After he died in 1802, his sons could not maintain the prosperous business their father had established in part because the shipping industry was crippled by the Jefferson Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812.

In 1839, the house was purchased by the Goodwins, a farming family, as the economy shifted towards agriculture. The Goodwin family enjoyed several prosperous decades of raising sheep and other crops until agriculture shifted towards the west in the late nineteenth century.

Because the house had fallen into disrepair, the local author, Sarah Orne Jewett, feared that the house would be torn down by the next buyer. In 1898, she convinced her friends, Emily and Elise Tyson to purchase the property. The Tysons, whose fortune was made in the railroads, wanted to use it as a summer retreat, which they restored in the Colonial Revival style to reflect their interest in their colonial forbears. They were also inspired by their trips to Italy and by Edith Wharton’s book, Italian Villas and Their Gardens.

When Emily died in 1922, Elise and her husband, Henry Vaughan, kept the house and summered here until 1949. She bequeathed Hamilton House to Historic New England, which has restored and maintained it ever since.

Historic New England

Historic New England owns and oversees several other houses in the South Berwick and Portsmouth area including:

• Sarah Orne Jewett House
• Jackson House
• Rundlett -May House
• Governor John Langdon House

Founded in 1910, Historic New England is the oldest and largest regional heritage organization in the country. Its mission is to preserve and present to the public New England’s architectural and cultural past, which includes historic buildings and their surrounding landscapes as well as art, furnishings, and artifacts. Your support makes this possible. So please visit their website (www.HistoricNewEngland.org) and plan a visit to one or more of these fabulous properties!

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Miles of tree-lined back country roads define the bucolic essence of Jaffrey. While Hingham and Cohasset awe the visitor with the grandeur of its homes and estates, Jaffrey’s beauty resides in its unspoiled landscape of woods, fields, ponds, farms, and views of Mount Monadnock.

The Garden & Kitchen Tour of Jaffrey is an annual event and this year five couples opened their homes to eager visitors. Once again it was a perfect summer day – sunny with a refreshing breeze that kept the heat at bay.

Three homes offered tours of their kitchens whose styles ranged from contemporary to antique. Two of the kitchen renovations, completed by Renoir Renovations of Jaffrey, involved knocking down walls to triple the original kitchen area. This makes sense given that kitchens are often the focal area for entertaining and require adequate space for the modern appliances that now define a well-equipped kitchen. Today’s wonderfully designed cabinets provide ample storage space and pull out shelving that make it easy to organize and access all of your kitchen equipment and staples. These kitchens can inspire even the most reluctant cook to make meals.

As for the gardens, the following were the stars of the tour for me:

• The working farm of Bonnie & Jeff Cutter. Former dairy farmers, this couple has worked hard to clear acres of overgrowth to reveal rolling fields with a view of Mount Monadnock, a small fishing pond, and areas for flower and vegetable gardens. Bonnie, who works seventy hours a week at a local garden center, somehow finds the time to create and maintain her beautiful gardens.But for her, it’s pure joy. “My bare hands cannot contain themselves when it comes to gardening,” declares Bonnie. The vegetable garden reflects her sense of humor and whimsy, starting with a wooden door with paned glass at the entrance to let you know that this is her favorite room of the house. She has transformed the foundation of what was once a sauna building into a floral and sculpture display. From a certain angle, it looks as if the reflecting globe is resting in the pair of cupped hands.
• The property of Tuesday & Dennis Wright. They have also carved out a garden paradise in the woods of Jaffrey. Selective clearing of overgrowth in the wooded areas helps to showcase native trees and plants. They have created a path through a wooded hill area and provided seating to further enjoy the property.In the sunny areas near their home, I especially enjoyed the Victorian style garden enclosed by an elegant wrought iron fence. When you have an expanse of property, it helps to define garden areas with a boundary such as a stone wall or a fence. In the flower beds at the foot of a hill in the back, I particularly liked the combination of flowering hostas with astilbe and daylilies.

During the tour, we stopped for lunch in downtown Jaffrey, which has a variety of small shops and restaurants. This lovely town center also features a town common and gazebo where band concerts are held throughout the summer.

The town center reflects the efforts of TEAM Jaffrey, a Main Street program that is dedicated to the revitalization of downtown. The funds raised from the kitchen and garden tour support sign and facade grant incentives for local business and property owners, and continues to support seasonal plantings in the Main Street area.

These Main Street programs throughout New England and the country help to restore and maintain the heart and soul of downtowns that have suffered in the last century when modernization shifted commerce from local communities to large companies and shopping areas elsewhere. Garden tours help to promote these revitalization efforts by showcasing progress made and raising awareness of work left to be done.

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It was perfect weather – sunny, but not too warm – for what proved to be a perfect garden tour in Hingham and Cohasset, Massachusetts. It was especially impressive given that this was the first garden tour given by a group of dedicated volunteers with the Glastonbury Abbey.

The garden tour included elements that I have found over the years go into a well-organized and executed tour:

• Professionally designed brochure that provides an overview of the gardens on the tour, a very clear and detailed map of the garden locations along with recommended routes, and a description of the organization and how it plans to use the funds raised by the tour.
• Signs at each of the garden sites indicating that it is part of the tour as well as volunteers to help with parking and greeting visitors. Signs along the route are also helpful, especially to those who are not familiar with the area.
• Refreshments, especially water, at each site. In the case of the Glastonbury Abbey tour, they served a lovely assortment of drinks and refreshments at the visitor center at the abbey. Each visitor received a gift bag, which I have never seen offered on a tour before; it included bottled water, sunscreen, discounts to a local shopping area and other assorted gifts in a lovely cloth bag.
• A reasonable number of gardens to be viewed in the time allotted. Sometimes more is not better when there is no time to stop to eat or have a restroom break! The Glastonbury Abbey tour included six gardens starting with the gardens at the abbey. This provided ample time to get to and view each garden as well as to stop at local restaurants and shops along the way.

This was my first time visiting Glastonbury Abbey, which is run by a community of Benedictine Monks and is a regional center for spiritual, educational, cultural, and social outreach activities. As one would expect, tranquility defines the layout of the grounds and the atmosphere of the buildings. The Japanese gardens provide a peaceful respite from the hectic outside world.

Many of the homes and estates in Hingham and Cohasset are a wonder to behold. Most of the older homes dating from Colonial times to the early twentieth century have been lovingly restored and maintained. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many estates in such a small area. So driving between garden sites on the tour was a real treat for the eyes.

All of the gardens, estates, and homes were a delight, but two in particular were the highlights of the tour for me:

• The Rizzotto home and garden in Hingham created by a local artist and her husband. Unlike many of the gardens in the area, theirs is truly their own creation and not that of a professional landscaper. This labor of love started as a 12′ by 12′ garden that has grown considerably over the past 35 years. A profusion of poppies lures you in for a closer look at a garden that is a mix of vegetables and flowers. The artist offers classes to the local community at their home using the gardens as inspiration for their artistic creations.
• The Abbruzzese home and garden on the Gulf River in Cohasset. It is a truly romantic estate with a Tuscan style villa complete with a round balcony in the back overlooking the river and a boat launch. Interesting architectural features defined intimate family spaces both inside and outside. A variety of shade and sunny gardens complemented outdoor cooking and eating areas. This estate was designed for entertaining family and friends, so clearly important to the owners. It was hard to leave the tranquil setting and warm atmosphere of this house and property.

Glastonbury Abbey plans to make this garden tour a biennial event. So be sure to check out this garden tour in 2013!