Back Issue
May/June 1996

Visiting Gardens All Season Long
by Enid Munroe

Gardeners who joined the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program last year were able to visit over a hundred of the best private gardens in the Northeast. In 1996 over 200 gardens will be open over sixteen weekend days from April through September in Connecticut, Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties, Long Island and New Jersey. The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Directory is modeled after England’s National Gardens Scheme “Yellow Book” program that has turned garden visiting in England into a national mania.

Our place was one of the seven gardens in the Westport-Fairfield area on last year’s trial run, and we loved all aspects of the experience. Keeping a garden motivated all summer hones your gardening skills and defines your standards. For instance, you must consider seriously whether or not “God is in the edges.”

Most gardens appreciate being fussed over, and on tour days our plants seem to outlive each other in presenting themselves to the garden inspectors. Experience teaches how to avoid pre-show jitters. Ceaseless garden patrol for instance reveals that the physostegia is about to run amok in the boltonia or that something has dematerialized during the night. And I’m getting pretty good at guessing bloom times and keeping fifty or so containers looking smart and fresh all summer long.

Our ten-year-old granddaughter, director of admission and head go-fer, observed that gardeners are really nice and have good garden manners, too. In 1994 our rather modest accomplishment here was on the Southport Garden Festival tour the same day as Martha Stewart with fifteen hundred visitors. They bent not a blade of grass.

We enjoy meeting other gardeners, exchanging plant stories and arranging seed swaps. Everyone seems to love the great burgundy leaves and odd seed pods of Ricinus communis, the mop-headed Joe pye weed (Euphorbia amygdaloides), my black plants and sedum collections, the grass garden, the blooming groves of papaver somniferum, the pot collection, tuteurs and arbors. And they are entertained by our various little gardens tucked in here and there that I can’t help making because plants that I can’t help collecting need a bed.

We visited other Directory gardens last summer. Following are descriptions of a few of our favorites, and each will be on the tour again the year.

In Washington one can see Barbara Robinson’s sophisticated composition of plants and shrubs, old walls, lattice work fences, arbors, paths, sheds, sculpture, aisles of lavender and islands of grass set in meadows and woodlands.

I love the old Westport cottage garden of the totally passionate gardener, Barlow Cutler-Wotton. Barlow is continually infusing her project with new ideas and new plants while maintaining the integrity of the garden and its history.

The Open Days program appeals to gardeners of all levels and tastes and demonstrates the multiple approaches to Northeast gardening. There are large, formal, professionally designed estate gardens maintained with old world-old money standards, and the small personal naturalistic domains of dedicated and passionate individuals. This enlightened program adds a profound new dimension and inspiration for those who love gardening in all of its manifestations.

Enid Munroe is an artist, garden writer and author of An Artist in the Garden (Henry Holt, 1994). Enid and Harry Munroe garden in Fairfield.

Resources
The Open Days Directory lists the gardens with a brief description, dates and hours and travel directions. Admission is $5 to each garden, with proceeds benefiting the Conservancy’s preservations programs or split with the charity of the garden owner’s choice.
The directory is available from the Garden Conservancy at P.O. Box 219, Cold Spring, NY 10516 (914-265-2029). The 2002 price is $15.95 plus $4.50 for shipping and handling.

Connecticut Gardener
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email: editor@ conngardener.com