Highgrove Gardens

Did you know that Prince Charles is a devoted and spectacularly gifted gardener and designer?

After an evening of ice skating last weekend, we came home and collapsed on to the couch to discover a PBS show on his gardens. He has an entire garden room called The Stumpery {first photo} - that features old branches, moss and ferns that grow among the rotting wood and around a small temple. HRH was also a huge proponent of organic gardening - decades before it was a thing. Enough of my yammering - take a look at these photos. {Here is a link to the show we watched, too.}

Source: thespec.com via Tracey on Pinterest

Source: portersgarden.hampshire.org.uk via Tracey on Pinterest

Source: highgrovegardens.com via Tracey on Pinterest

My Head Is In Spring Garden Visits

The subtlest of changes are happening during this last stretch of February. Songbirds are ramping things up a bit. Bulbs are pushing shoots through the muddy-slush covered ground. The evening sky stretches out in golds and pinks and purples well past 5 p.m.

With these exciting shifts comes my garden wanderlust. New places to see during the height of spring. My top three of the wishlist:

Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania and Winterthur in Winterthur, Delaware. Willa and I may meet up with the grandparents for this trip, which makes it that much sweeter.

Agecroft Hall in Richmond, Virginia. An Elizabethan knot garden on an estate along the James River beckons. The genuine Tudor manor house was actually dismantled in England and shipped overseas to Richmond to be reassembled at its present spot. A day trip for me - so very do-able now that Willa's nap schedule has changed.

Historic Garden Week in Virginia. My first year getting to this event - I carried a two-month-old Willa around in her Moby wrap and we saw stunning Greenwood estates. Last year, the houses were in and around Free Union and Willa was on my back. This year, the gardens on the tour are tucked away in the area off of 250 West, closer to Ivy and I have a mobile, strong-willed biped on my hands. (I'll be blogging about the tours this year for Virginia Living Magazine.) Is it April yet?!

*******

Photo from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Gardens.

Globe Trotting and Garden Hopping :: Hill Top

What we hope is the tail-end of our month of nasty bugs had some very sweet down-times. I finally bought The Beatrix Potter Collection DVD (more for me than for Willa, I soon realized). Snuggling in on the couch with a dog (or two), a Willa, a blanket and some Peter Rabbit or Jeremy Fisher made for a speedy recovery.

Each gorgeously illustrated story has a short intro, in which an actress portraying Beatrix Potter is found sitting sketching in a field until she is interrupted by a rain storm and runs back to her cozy house, her menagerie of critters, a warm fire and a cup of tea. At her desk, she continues her story-spinning and then the animation part of the episode begins.

I found myself loving the short introductions as much as the actual stories. And then learned that those filmed bits were shot at Hill Top. The real-deal home and gardens of Beatrix Potter.

Annnnd the Lake District of England goes on The List. Big sigh. Need to work on finding that worldwide garden tour benefactor.

************
Middle photo from flickr member jay_bee and bottom photo from flickr member gobucks2.

Globe Trotting and Garden Hopping :: Grey Towers

During the recent mid-winter lock downs, the farthest some of my gardening adventures have gone have been in my mind. Helped along by books. Which, for all my life, have made the winters rich and cozy.

My most recent discovery was found through The Loveliest Woman in America by Bibi Gaston.

A huge part of the book is about place and is written by a landscape architect. It is also about a family and the ways in which a family can be fractured through tragedy and greed.

The Loveliest Woman in America was Rosamond Pinchot. The author is her granddaughter, who learns about her family through Rosamond's diaries (given to her just a few years ago). Rosamond was an actress from New York Society - who killed herself at a very young age in 1938.

One of the places that we keep returning to, as readers, is the family's Grey Towers. A French-inspired mansion in Milford, Pennsylvania. Surrounded by verdant, moss-covered woodlands and waterfalls that fed private swimming holes.

Grey Towers also boasted some seriously manicured and thought-out formal gardens. Which included a curious bit of hardscaping called The Finger Bowl. Under a domed, vine-laden pergola sits a stone water table with a blue bottom. Guests would sit around the table and dine, while 'plates heavy with food sailed back and forth across the water on wooden barges.' Scaring, I would imagine, the goldfish that moved in a sleek fashion just below water's edge.

Fascinating! Photos below are then and now photos of The Finger Bowl. Pure fodder for mid-winter, mental health garden trips of the mind's eye.

*******************
Photo credits: The first three photos are courtesy of Grey Towers and their lovely website. The bottom photo is courtesy of Steve Silk, taken from his article on Pergolas and Arbors in Gardening Gone Wild.

Globe Trotting and Garden Hopping :: Blithewold

So I have this wish in which my mom and I meet up once-a-year or so at a spectacular part of the world for garden visits and explorations. With Willa in tow.

And since mom sent me a newspaper clipping earlier this month about Blithewold - Bristol, Rhode Island has officially made this wish list. To see a photo of its rose garden's stone archway fall out of my mom's note card was a much-needed reminder that spring will arrive. Eventually. And explorations lay waiting on the horizon. Yipee-kick.

Kristin Green, Blithewold's Interpretive Horticulturist (could there really be a cooler job?!), blogs about Blithewold and gardening here. She was kind enough to let me reprint these photos from the Blithewold website.

Because I thought you too, dear readers, could use a little garden pick-me-up amidst all of this snow, sleet and slush. Spring awaits, as it does every year.

Mid-Winter in the Hollow

Books, music, seed catalogs, on-line garden visits, live curtains, knitting . . .

While chipping away at the New Classics Challenge, I took a break and gobbled up A Childhood in Scotland by Christian Miller. I wish that it lasted for another 200 pages. I kept the descriptions of the cold, drafty, intriguing life in a castle at arms length by reading in front of our wood stove.

New music from my brother is on constant play on my iPod. Of Montreal, Thievery Corporation and Girl Talk. Making driving to and from work in the wee hours and twilight just a little brighter and that much groovier.

My mom sent me a newspaper clipping on Blithewold - an estate and garden up in Bristol, Rhode Island. Take a visit, think summer, smell the salty air.

White Flower Farm and Johnny's Selected Seeds catalogs braved the January chill and landed in my mailbox last week. They break up the gray days nicely.

Birds!! Our feeders finally fell onto the radar of what seem like busloads of chickadees, titmice, red and gold finches, cardinals and juncos. They flutter around our window feeder - much to Willa's delight.

I am working on this knit hat from SouleMama. Yarn overs are new to me - there's been a bit of swearing and unraveling . . . but it is starting to look like something.

And on Friday, a peak at a live curtain I am cultivating in our kitchen area . . . I know! Y'all are on the edge of your seats!

**************

Iris illustration from the White Flower Farm online catalog.

Tasha Tudor and Her Gardens

In a parallel universe, I would be an apprentice to Tasha Tudor. Learning all about cottage gardens. Tending to hollyhocks, forget-me-nots, foxgloves. Baking bread and hand-dipping candles and wearing old-fashioned smocks and bonnets while sitting next to the fire with some knitting.

Tasha died earlier this year, at the age of 92, and I imagine she is somewhere - curled up with a corgi or two and sewing, painting, creating.

What she left behind are treasures upon treasures. In the gardening world, she has written books about gardening with children and her own gardening endeavors. You can buy cottage garden seeds from her garden descendants, as well. The prints above are her own watercolors of her gardens.

Tasha's world is also big on the cozy, simple celebrations around wintertime and Christmas. I just put two videos on hold at our local library - on the holidays with Tasha Tudor and The Magical World of Tasha Tudor. With the long Thanksgiving weekend coming up - I'm hoping I can curl up with Willa for a bit and visit Tasha's Vermont house for a half hour or so.

I know that I would look silly in a bonnet, but Willa is always a willing model.

The Slower Hum of Summer

A little time indoors. A little time outdoors. Some time daydreaming. Some time with a nose in a book or an ear to the ground. Lately enjoying . . .




1. The Endless Feast - my end-of-the-day eye candy. This PBS show focuses on local foods. The crew visits different parts of the country and they plan feasts around what is in-season. Mile-long tables are set up in the middle of a farm field and guests eat to their heart's content in the evening sun.

2. Soy yarn in Geranium and green flower buttons for Willa's first fall sweater. I am never going to bother with knitting adult sweaters eva-again. When baby things are so easy to knit up - in a flash! Ha - so satisfying.


3. Baby swing smocks and bloomers from Angry Chicken (a.k.a. Bend the Rules sewing guru Amy Karol). Ditto on the adult clothing racket. Zip-zip-zip. My sewing machine feels like magic!


4. Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden by Emily Whaley - I bought this while on our Charleston honeymoon several years ago and made the pilgrimage to Mrs. Whaley's garden that same week. This sweet book is charming and has some interesting Southern recipes. Perfect mid-afternoon hammock-swinging (or air-conditioning) read. This photo is from gardentraveler.com.

5. During our commute home to Sugar Hollow, Lynne Rossetto Kasper keeps me company via podcast. The Splendid Table takes me to far away places and then, brings me back down to earth, to test things out in my own kitchen. She has a new part of the program on locavores and the Sterns' Road Food bit sends me on a mini-foodie vacation every time. Complete with the craving for something fried and a malted milkshake.


6. Plans for our own gardens continue and I save clippings and images from the garden geniuses of others. The above photo is from The Arbogast Inn in Monterey, Virginia. The owners of the inn tracked the image (and me) down through flickr. To report that a cow crashed through that fence shortly after I snapped the photo!

Margaret As Mentor

Margaret Roach: rock star gardener, writer, alum of Martha Stewart Magazine (she was their first gardening editor). She has started a blog - A Way To Garden: Horticultural How-To (and Woo Woo). It couldn't come at a better time, as I am foisting myself up by my bootstraps and thinking about taming parts of the landscape in Sugar Hollow to become garden rooms with moods and texture and shade and, and, and (!).

These are photos of Margaret's garden in upstate New York. Ponds, stonework, grassy pathways, outbuildings. It is good to be reminded of what I love in a garden and what I might want in my own.

Another favorite section of her blog: The exhaustive, yet light-hearted, (Month-By-Month) Garden Chores. On the main page - center gray column. On-line garden coaching at its best!

Field Trip: Planting Fields Arboretum

Planting Fields Arboretum
Oyster Bay, Long Island - New York

I first discovered the Planting Fields in my early 20's. When I was working and living in New York City and visiting with my parents on the weekends. Desperate for trees, fresh air, open spaces - it became the place I would go to contemplate major life decisions. Its energy always brought things into focus for me. Sending me off - ready to take on the world.

Or, er, in some cases . . . equipped with the where-with-all to break-up with a boyfriend. Grimace.

*******
This Gold Coast estate on Long Island's North Shore was built in 1904. In keeping with the grandeur of the times, the property and its outbuildings didn't miss a step.

A Main Greenhouse (still active and thriving) showcases over 1,000 types of orchids; 250 varieties of cacti and succulents; palm trees; begonias and ferns. The Camellia House is the "largest collection of its kind under glass in North America."

The Grounds include a Synoptic Garden. An Azalea and Rhododendron Walk. Formal garden areas with roses, lilacs and perennials. A Children's Play Cottage. A Tea House and an Italian Blue Pool Garden. A secret pool. A huge weeping linden. Old stands of beeches!

These photos were taken during my trip to New York last month. Thankfully, with no major life decisions to make. Just time to traipse on the grounds of this breathtaking estate. I have arrived.

Weeping atlas cedar and clematis.

Tea House porch and bench.

Tea House


The Secret Pool - tucked in a boxwood-heavy corner of the estate.


Rose and Lilac Walk


Ironwork and creeping roses.


The Main Greenhouse

A dahlia from the Dahlia Garden.

The Children's Play Cottage

The Camellia House

A Deep Impression

On Sunday, Leora and I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. While Leora studied and absorbed the British Watercolors exhibit, I wandered around and sat in the impressionism gallery for a long while.

Claude Monet's Poppy Field at Giverny still sticks with me as I plod away at my office tasks today. I have a new appreciation for the different hues of orange. Among the blues and the greens . . . A poppy field would suit Sugar Hollow just perfectly. Ugh! So many garden projects, so little time. And, um, I should probably shoot for a patch, not a field.

Garden Interest: Temples of Love

Temple of Love - Martin Viette Nursery - East Norwich, New York

Temple of Love - Maymont - Richmond, Virginia

My favorite view of these structures is not from the outside. But, from a seat in the center of the temple. Looking up.

I have seen these Temples of Love in many Gilded Era estate gardens - perched on the edge of a hill or set lake-side looking up at the house. The seats were perfect, I imagine, for big skirts and fancy suits circa 1910. For teas and picnics. And thankfully, these days, for the derrieres of the hoi polloi.

Temple of Love - Old Westbury Gardens - Old Westbury, New York

Bringing It All Back Home

Pooped beyond pooped. I rocked a little too much last week (Lucinda Williams on Tuesday, Bob and Elvis on Thursday). Lesson learned (as in "You're no longer 25") and sleep was embraced this past weekend. Ready to slow things down a bit and (happily) get back to routines.

******

During my visit with family up in New York, I finally took some photos of my mom's garden. She has created a wonderfully inviting world in what she calls her 'postage stamp' plot. Little corners invite you to sit. Other parts look like decades-old shade gardens - with moss and hostas and vinca. Red window shutters peek out of ivy growing over the garage. And, I'm totally snagging her idea for the arborvitae, verbena, lobelia and brachycome container. It smacks beautifully of Italy. Take a look-see.

Arborvitae, verbena, petunias, brachycome and lobelia.

Black-eyed susans finding support in a rustic fence.

Pale yellow Million Bells in a weathered window box.

I love how these elements work together - slate path stones, mossy brick, grass and the colors of the container spilling out and pulling it all together.

Field Trip: Old Westbury Gardens

Old Westbury Gardens
Old Westbury, New York

As a spirited and overly-imaginative child visiting Old Westbury Gardens, as we did every Mother's Day, I was captivated by The House. The Ghost Walk. The pet cemetery. The children's play cottage. The land and secret gardens. Captivated in a way that stuck with me as I visited other gardens around the world. And found that nothing compared to Old Westbury and the hold it had on my heart.

As a grown-up infatuated with gardens, during last week's visit, my attention turned more to the horticultural feats that Old Westbury achieved and maintains. Noting (among many others distractions) that in the middle of September, the Walled Garden was still packed with color and blossoms. Asters, zinnias, cleomes, salvia, roses. Gasp, gasp, gasp!

But at the end of the day, I could not go without a peek into the cottage and a tromp down the most curious spot of all - the Ghost Walk.

If you live within two hours of Old Westbury - GO. Pack a picnic. Make sure to give yourself plenty of time to look, sit, take it all in. Benches are located all around the grounds - and this is no accident. After all, there are 88 acres of formal gardens. Certainly nothing to sniff at . . .

For the serious-minded gardeners, there is the Walled Garden, the Boxwood Garden, the Grey Garden, the Rose and Lilac Garden and a myriad of display gardens. A lake walk. A grotto-type structure that overlooks a pool - complete with seashell mosaics. And, for the absolute plant-nerd in all of us, carefully placed placards for each and every plant and tree.

Or simply find your inner child and discover the Ghost Walk for yourself. Maybe, just maybe, if you go on Mother's Day, you'll see the specter of a mischievous little girl in long braids. Out of breath and laughing while terrorizing and spooking her younger brothers amid the hemlocks and the shade. Enchanted and engulfed by the magic of these wonderful gardens.

Pond in the Walled Garden

The Walled Garden

Climbing rose in the Rose Garden

Salvia and dahlias in the Walled Garden

Fountain in the Walled Garden

Asters in the Walled Garden

Cleome and trellis in the Walled Garden

The Estate at Old Westbury Gardens

Gate ironwork

The children's play cottage

Primrose Path

The Ghost Walk!

The Boxwood Gardens