Gardens Are More Than Plants

Kousa Dogwood - Bonifaz garden

It takes more than plants to make a garden. First, it takes time.

Deirdre Bonifaz  and her husband Cristobal moved to Conway in 1985. For Deirdre it was a return to a part of the world she knew as a youngster. In the 1950s her father had moved the family from New York to a West Whately farm, to be closer to the soil and the essentials of life. ‘He was a man ahead of his time,” Deirdre said thinking of all the back to the landers who would  come to this area a decade and more later.

After graduating from high school she went off to college – and continued traveling  after her marriage to Cristobal.  Her husband’s work as a lawyer took him to many exotic places; her first child was born in Ethiopia.

By the time she and her husband bought their old house in Conway she had satisfied all her wanderlust. The house had been built by an apothecary in the 18^th century, but had other owners including a farmer who built a large dairy barn behind the house. The barn was in serious disrepair and in spite of their heroic efforts to restore it the barn came down in 1995.

The gardens became more expansive at that difficult time for Bonifaz. At the same time they were taking down the barn, her mother was dying.  When the last of the barn debris was taken away she was left with the stone barn foundation. Here she planned a Walled Garden and dedicated it to the memory of her mother.

The second thing a garden needs is love.  Over the years, as the gardens grew, other memorial plantings were added. Bonifaz’s garden is a living testament to the love for family. The most notable is the Walled Garden with its magnificent roses.

Nina Newington, a skilled and knowledgeable gardener with a specialty in roses, was still living in our area in the 90s. She worked with Bonifaz to plant hardy antique roses in the protection of the barn foundation walls. Newington liked the roses from Pickering Nursery in Canada because they were so sturdy.  There was never any trouble ordering and having the roses cross the border.

I know that William Baffin is a vigorous climber, but I have never seen anything like the exuberant growth of the one in this garden. “Nina had me put up a support to hold it because she knew it would be needed,” Bonifaz said.  The support is made of sturdy timbers about six feet tall in a kind of pergola that hold the rose bush that climbs over the foundation wall to a height of at least ten feet.

When I asked her how she cared for the roses to get such vigor and growth she said, “I don’t fertilize except to put three or four shovelfuls of good compost around the base of each rose in the fall. In the spring I spread it around the bush.”  She then allowed as how she did fertilize The Fairy during the summer, but not the other roses.

Other roses in the Walled Garden include Madame Alfred Carriere, a large white climber, Madame Hardy another white with a beautiful green button ‘eye’,  the pale pink New Dawn climber and Goldfinch, all white and gold.

A third element necessary for a beautiful garden is variety, which Bonifaz and her husband have provided in their plantings of fruit trees, blooming trees, shrubs, perennials, and built structures.

Bonifaz says she spends a lot of time on the beautifully laid brick patio at the end of the new barn/garage that houses her husband’s legal office. There, surrounded by lilacs, Salvia ‘May Night’, irises, lady’s mantle and other perennials she, her husband, and guests can enjoy meals and talk.

I was taken with the pergola supporting more roses, and the new rustic supports for tomato plants.

Herb Garden

Perhaps thinking of the apothecary who built the house, and all apothecaries who used medicinal plants, Bonifaz has planted a small fenced herb garden laid out with geometric beds that is as useful as it is beautiful. “I was inspired by a medieval garden I saw,” she said.

The Bonifaz garden is just one of the gardens that will inspire visitors on the 22^nd Annual Franklin Land Trust Farm and Garden tour on Saturday and Sunday, June 26 and 27. The event will include six private gardens, five unique farms, two studios, one of which is a fascinating woodworking studio, and the Boyden One Room Schoolhouse in Conway.   The event runs from 10:00 to 4:00 each day.  This year the tour centers on Conway and West Whately. For full information about tickets logon to www.franklinlandtrust.org or call Linda Alvord at (413) 625-9151 or email lalvord@franklinlandtrust.org.

Tomato supports

Between the Rows  June 19, 2010

William Baffin – on Tour

William Baffin

This is not my William Baffin rose! Alas!  I visited Deirdre Bonifaz whose garden is on the Franklin Land Trust Garden tour on June 26 & 27. Her garden has everything – blooming trees, blooming shrubs, fruit trees, perennials, vegetables, herbs, AND roses!

We went around identifying the roses when we could, and admiring them always.  Deirdre could hardly believe that I had managed to kill a William Baffin rose.  You can see what hers looks like. When Nina Newington was living here and helping Deirdre she insisted on building a sturdy support to hold the William Baffin. It looks kind of like a ’short’ pergola, but I should point out that the rose is at least  ten feet tall.  The support was about as tall as I am.

I have never seen a rose like this, even though William Baffin, one of the Canadian Explorer hybrids, is known for being a vigorous grower. Deirdre bought hers from the Pickering Nursery in Canada and said their is no problem with the plants crossing the border.

This year’s Franklin Land Trust tour focuses on gardens and farms in Conway and Whately. Please contact the office at 413.625.9151 to purchase tickets or email: lalvord@verizon.net

There are other roses in this beautiful garden including climbing roses on a pergola.

White climber

Based on its size and fierce thorns we think this pink mystery rose might be Jens Munk.

The  roses are spectacular, but there are more subtle beauties as well. I loved this little yellow columbine.

Columbine

Dream Housing

Our dream house in a dreamy landscape

When I first met my husband in 1971 we used to dream about our ideal home. Inspired by a Beetle Bailey comic strip, we called this mythical place Pork Corners. There was nothing porky about my house on Grinnell Street in Greenfield, but there in the tiny side yard I planted my first vegetable garden. I kissed the friend who came to dinner and brought a load of old horse manure as a thank you.  He sent a basket of apples for the children, but I really liked that manure.

Our neighbors, John and Mary Zon, raised raspberries. And taught us about raspberries.

Next we moved to North Berwick, Maine while I taught for a year. I bought a house and barn, but it was on an almost suburban street. I wasn’t sure this was Pork Corners, so we called it Ant and Bee Farm. We had ants, and bees, and chickens and pigs, and a huge garden, but it only took a year to make us decide to move to The Big Apple.

We lived in Henry’s ancestral apartment where the only animal life was five teenagers. When it was time to leave the little apartment in the big city, we thought about returning to Maine and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners, but Heath called. End of the Road Farm currently has chickens and cats, but we have had pigs. Once they were slaughtered and butchered right in the  farmyard, while a wet snow fell. I might have been looking at a medieval scene.

We all have dreams about where and how we want to live. I grew up thinking you owned a house or rented an apartment. Nowadays there are many ways to arrange ownership of a home. Together on the Land: Options for Ecological Living in Community is a tour co-sponsored by the Cooperative Development Institute, Equity Trust, Franklin Land Trust, Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust & Valley Community Land Trust scheduled for Saturday, June 12 from 9 to 5. Do you know the difference between a coop, condo, and cohousing? .  Click here for full tour information. Maybe you will find a new way to get your dream home.

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Today, June 5 is also the first day of the new Farmer’s Market in Charlemont. It will be held at Hawlemont School from 10 to 2 pm.  Students from the school will be selling their produce, along with other vendors. If anyone knows of others interested in being vendors they should contact the manager at  jason@penandplow.net who is working at the new Pen and Plow Farm in Hawley.

The Oakes Garden of Sun and Shade

One of the sunny borders

Pam Oakes assures me that neither her house, nor the lush surrounding gardens existed in 1976. When she and her husband Gordon first walked this piece of land by a pond once used for harvesting ice, they could not even imagine where to place a house until a friend bulldozed a stand of sumac and said “Build here!”  They did and she said it is a perfect site.

            The gardens grew and continue to grow. Oakes said she never had an overarching and unchanging vision. “Lots of little visions,” she said with a smile.

            Those little visions have been spurred by changes in the landscape, some intentionally as when they decided to take down 6 pine trees, and sometimes of necessity as when a large maple died, came down and opened a section of garden to sun that it had never known.  She assured me, “If you don’t like change, don’t garden. Nature is about big changes.”

            Although there is a great deal of variety in Oakes’ garden, the lesson I took away from my visit is the power of masses of a single plant. This garden has been growing, maturing – and changing – for decades, but creating a flowery mass can begin by planting at least three or more of the same  perennial together because they quickly become a single mass.

In this garden paradoxically consistent and contrasting plantings of lady’s mantle (alchemilla), various astilbes, heucheras, cranesbills and hostas create a peaceful inviting atmosphere. The skill Oakes has gained over years of working in her own garden, and designing for others, has made it all look easy, as if those plantings were simply inevitable.

Oakes’s gardens lead from sun to shade to sun. One gracefully curving sunny border was backed by trees and shrubs. “I love big shrubs,” she said, as we looked at a huge Kolkwitzia (Chinese beauty bush) part of a tapestry of trees and shrubs including a Japanese maple, winterberries and a katsura tree.  Using shrubs that will grow to substantial size in a relatively short time, like the kolkwitzia, is another way of achieving a mass of foliage and bloom.

Michael Dirr, who has written encyclopedic books on trees and shrubs, is Oakes’ guru. He will certainly steer people who are unfamiliar with many shrubs and their needs to plants of interest and dependability.

In front of those shrubs and trees are large plantings of peonies, baptisia (false indigo), daylilies, salvia, and other perennials. Oakes loves blue and when I visited many blue flowers were in bloom including several baptisias. There was the familiar old fashioned Baptisia australis with its clear blue blossoms and the hybrid Purple Smoke, an aptly descriptive name.

 Oakes warned me that before putting in a baptisia I should be very sure about the location. Baptisia has a long tap root and doesn’t like being moved.  That was an important warning for me because I am so apt to buy a plant impulsively, plant it any old where thinking I can always move it when the good spot it deserves occurs to me.

Oakes pointed out that, for the most part, she does not have rare or unusual plants in her garden. Most of them she gets from Bay State Perennials, which is near by and has a wide choice of good plants. “When you are designing for other people you need to choose plants that will survive and thrive,” she said.

Of course, every ‘rule’ is meant to be broken. Oakes said she had never seen an actual American ironwood tree, only read about it and seen photos, but she decided she must have one.  She called the arborist C. L. Frank in Northampton and asked him if he had such a tree. “He hesitated,” she said, “and then told me he had just acquired a 50 year old ironwood that had to be moved. It had a seven foot root ball; it was quite a job driving and moving it into place in the back yard.”  That was 20 years ago. The tree with its unique trunk and spreading canopy is now a major feature in the garden.  Oakes explained that it is rarely seen in gardens because it is so slow growing.

All the gardens including productive vegetable and herb gardens, berry patches and stone walls built by her husband Gordon, will be open to the public as part of the 21^st Annual Franklin Land Trust Garden and Farm Tour on June 27 and 28^th.  This year the tour is centered on the Deerfield to Whately area and includes charming and unique private gardens as well as farms of sometimes surprising scale. As a special feature tour tickets will also include admittance to three Historic Deerfield buildings and the PVMA’s Memorial Hall Museum.

 Tickets are $20 and good for the whole weekend. For more information about the Franklin Land Trust and the tour logon to www.franklinlandtrust.org or call 413-6259151, ext. 8.

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After seeing how Oakes has used  daylilies as specimens in her beds, I want to mention a daylily sale at Glenbook Gardens (located off Leyden Road before you get to the covered bridge) on Saturday, June 20 from 9am to 4 pm. This is an opportunity to buy field grown daylilies by name, color or bloom season. Signs will be up to direct visitors to the sale. ###    There will be another sale there on July 11. A great opportunity.

June 13, 2009

Volunteers Wanted

The garden of Pam and Gordon Oakes is just one of the gardens featured on this year’s Franklin Land Trust Farm and Garden tour held on Saturday and Sunday, June 27 and 28.  This tour is a major fundraiser for the FLT whose mission is to ‘work with landowners and communities to protect their farms, forests, and other natural resources significant to the environmental quality, economy and rural character of our region.’

This year the tour, centered in  the Deerfield-Whately area, also includes admission to three of the Historic Deerfield buildings and the PVMA Memorial Hall Museum.

There is still an opportunity to play a part in the FLT’s mission, by volunteering to help staff the garden and farm sites. There is a need for people to help with parking and to answer questions. If you are interested in volunteering, call the Franklin Land Trust office for more information.  413-625-9151 or 413-625-9152.

There is also still time to buy a Tour ticket ($20) that will be good for the whole weekend, lots of time to savor beautiful gardens, surprising farms, and history of our area.