“How’s your garden this year?” This is the question on everyone’s lips this summer, and in my case the answer is “Not good.” I began with the usual good intentions, and even more energy and enthusiasm as I decided to start my own vegetable seedlings and enlarge the garden. My plan was to grow more of my own vegetables than ever, and thus save lots of money on grocery bills. However, we all…
Lorraine Brennan is not a woman daunted by a challenge. When she and her husband bought a house by the side of the road in Northfield 20 years ago, it was surrounded by what seemed to be acres of blacktop parking lot. Now it is surrounded by what seems to be acres of garden – trees, shrubs, and perennials. Especially daylilies. The house by the side of the road, Route 10, was perfect for Brennan’s antiques business.…
“I guess you can see I like water,” Jane Markoski said as she gave me a tour through her gardens. There was a birdbath in the shady entry garden, a trickling fountain as you turned the corner of the house, a bubbling faux millstone fountain at the corner of the barn, a lotus tub in the middle of a mixed shrub and perennial border, a small fish pond with a waterfall, and a larger fish pond with a…
These tours are over, but even these brief garden descriptions may be useful to others. When I visited Mary Manilla’s garden in Hawley this week it was a ribbon of green along the stream that borders the garden. By the time the Hawley Garden and Artisans Tour takes place on Saturday, July 11, there will be a river of color along the stream as the hundreds and hundreds of daylilies in every hue come into bloom. It…
We moved from Manhattan to the End of the Road with our three daughters the day after Thanksgiving in 1979. Winter arrived in Heath that night. It was a long cold Heath winter in our uninsulated house. We spent a lot of time dreaming and planning for the spring when we could be warm - and make a garden. After having just read Katherine White’s book, Onward and Upward in the Garden I was determined to have hardy,…
Kathy Puckett is a collector. She has hundreds of orchids and hundreds of daylilies. She has lilies and roses and peonies. But right now she is celebrating her Siberian irises. Blue, purple, yellow and white. Great clumps of healthy gorgeous plants. When I asked if she had a favorite flower family (it was obvious she could never choose a favorite individual flower) she hesitated. “I love them all for different reasons. Sometimes I love the flower, or…
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…
As I prepare for this year's Annual Rose Viewing, I thought I'd re-run a tale of preparation in 2006, another wet spring. I have been working all week to prepare the garden for the Annual Rose Viewing which we hold the last Sunday in June from 1-4 pm. In between rainstorms my husband has mowed lawns and trimmed, moved potted plants and been at the ready to weed and prune. As I’ve worked, trimming the grass around the…
“June! Finally I’m going to have flowers,” a friend said after bemoaning how long it took for spring flowers to arrive in her garden. While it is true that a June garden can hardly avoid blooming, it is also true that a garden can have some bloom from April into October, even here in Heath. When my friend Elsa Bakalar was gardening in Heath she had enormous beds of perennials…
I walked through the garden with my Sunday morning coffee amazed and delighted to see that the fat pink buds of my Guan Yin Mian tree peony had opened. Guan Yin is the name of the Bodhisattva (or goddess) of Compassion. The term bodhisattva is not much used in the west. It means those who have chosen to remain in the world even though they have enough merit to reach nirvana. Guan Yin is almost…