Fountain and manor house today

For the happy occasion September 22nd, the staff has planned a variety of activities that will encourage the whole family to enjoy the property.   Bird sightings and nature walks should engage people of all ages; children's activities in Weezie's Garden will be fun for the very young, and adults will appreciate the garden lectures, workshops and tours.  No one should leave early because an art show by the Welleslely Society of Artisit will unfold in the afternoon, along with Elm Bank history lectures. The early evening will feature cocktails and a quartet in the Italianate garden.  All celebrants will hope that a beautiful sunset will cap the end of a perfect day and the promise of a great future at Elm Bank.

The community event is free and open to the public.  Lunch will be available for purchase, and don't miss out on the Cake and Ice Cream celebration in early afternoon. For updates on the titles and times of activities, consult our website at www.Masshort.org. 

Photo by B. Sijkpes

Downton Abbey fans have something to celebrate: A Downton Abbey-inspired Garden Party to be held right here at the Gardens at Elm Bank!   

Hosted by Leslie & Kyle Mann of Gibson Sotheby's International Realty, the Garden Party Fundraiser will support our Garden to Table program. This innovative program gives the community an opportunity to come together in a beautiful and welcoming setting to learn about growing, cooking, and preserving healthy food. Our Garden to Table program provides organic produce to families in need. Last year, the garden produced over 3,500 pounds of fresh organic vegetables for two local food pantries.

The Downton Abbey Garden Party will help us to raise fund and awareness about this wonderful program. We invite you to join us on Sunday afternoon, September 15 to:

• Stroll through the exquisite Massachusetts Horticultural Society Gardens
• Enjoy delicious cocktails and hors d'oeuvres by the Catered Affair
• Watch a match by New England's premier cricket team
• Don your finest post-Edwardian era attire & enter our best costume and best hat contests
• Enter to win luxury prizes

More exciting details are coming shortly!

Tickets will be available at masshort.org in the coming weeks. Please contact  leslie.mann@gibsonsir.com or 508-904-4967 for event updates and/or to join us as an event sponsor.

To learn more about the Garden to Table program, please contact Lisa Kamer at lkamer@masshort.org or 617-933-4943.

PS: We'd love to have local garden clubs join us in providing floral arrangements for the event. It's a fun way to show off your creative flair! Please contact Leslie Mann for details. 

More carrots in the bed on the lower left

June in the Garden to Table Vegetable Garden is a busy month for us with the transition from spring to summer.  We harvested our beautiful lettuce beds until it got too hot for them at the end of June, and they've now given way to tomato plants.

In April we planted carrot seeds, and while we've seen plenty of foliage, we have had to take it on faith that the carrot roots are developing well.   Last week our faith was rewarded when we pulled our first carrots of the season.  Not only do they look great, but freshly harvested carrots smell great too - working in this garden is a treat for all the senses.

Magda Summer Squash

One of the jobs we always do in June is to support our tomato plants.  We love tomatoes but they do need ongoing attention all summer!  We are demonstrating several ways to grow tomatoes, including overhead trellising, cages, and spirals. This was one of the topics for our hands-on education day in the garden on Saturday, June 22.

And in a sign of things to come, we harvested our first summer squash on June 27th!

Come visit the garden; we harvest on non-holiday Monday and Thursday mornings and visitors are welcome.

On Thursday, October 17, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society will  convene at 7:00 p.m. for its 114th Honorary Medals Dinner. 

William Cullina, Executive Director, Coastal Maine Botanic Garden, will receive Mass Hort's highest honor, the George Robert White Medal of Honor. Bill will give the keynote address, titled "Gardening On the Edge of the Continent."

This year the Society will celebrate some significant anniversaries among its affiliated organizations.   One of its oldest associations and a recipient of a Gold Medal this year is the Stockbridge School of Agriculture.

Another recipient of the Gold Medal will be the Garden Club of America, which has generously bestowed honors on horticulturists since its founding, 100 years ago. Mass Hort returned the favor to the Club once in the past, in 1982, and is now summoning it for another bow.

Newcomers to our stage are Mary Ann Streeter, recipient of the Thomas Roland Medal, fellow Gold Medal winners, Allandale Farm, and Art Scarpa, and Silver Medal winners Katherine Tracey, and David Epstein.

Tickets to the event will be available by contacting Jess Adani, Director of Development, at jadani@masshort.org or 617-933-4945.

Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill: Creating Green Spaces in Urban Places

Written and published by the Beacon Hill Garden Club with photography by Peter Vanderwarker and Thomas Lingner/The Able Lens (2013)

by Patrice Todisco

Photos courtesy of Beacon Hill Garden Club

On the third Thursday in May members of Boston's Beacon Hill Garden Club welcome garden enthusiasts to their neighborhood to attend one of the city's most popular horticultural events, the Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill tour.  The first tour, held in May of 1929, included eleven "backyard gardens" and successfully raised more than one thousand dollars for civic initiatives.  Eighty-five years later the tradition continues offering a unique opportunity to visit intimate private gardens otherwise concealed from public view while supporting environmental projects.

Photo by Thomas Lingner

The hidden gardens of Beacon Hill are diminutive in scale, irregular in size and most often shaded.  It is these challenges and limitations and the design elements that are used to ameliorate them that provide the framework for Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill: Creating Green Spaces in Urban Places, the fifth in a series of publications written collaboratively by members of the Beacon Hill Garden Club.

Like the gardens themselves this is a small book full of surprises.  At 88

Photo by Thomas Lingner

pages in length the full-color hard bound volume features more than fifty gardens exquisitely photographed by Peter Vanderwarker and Thomas Lingner.  Although they share common features, the gardens vary in character through the use of thoughtful and creative design elements tailored to accentuate their individuality.  These elements, around which the book is structured, include paving, wall treatments, changes in levels, gates, doors, ornaments, furniture, light, color and plant material.  A list of plants that succeed in the gardens is provided.

Each chapter of Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill: Creating Green Spaces in Urban Places highlights a single design element.  Introductory text and a series of photographs follow illustrating the use of that element in multiple gardens.  This technique provides a new lens in which to view the gardens as an ensemble of individual spaces within the context of the larger Beacon Hill community.  By focusing on design elements rather than individual gardens the book provides a useful template for solving problems in other highly constrained urban spaces.

Photo by Thomas Lingner

The ability of gardens and landscape to foster community is further illuminated in an introductory chapter detailing the history of the Beacon Hill Garden Club as a civic and philanthropic organization.  Committed to improving the urban environment through horticulture and education members of the Beacon Hill Garden Club are involved in a wide range of landscape projects and have designed and currently maintain four downtown Boston gardens.  These include the Old North Church garden in the North End and the grounds of the Peter Faneuil House Garden on Beacon Hill. Committed to the beautification of Beacon Hill and areas of immediate proximity

The net proceeds of Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill: Creating Green Spaces in Urban Places as well as the annual Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill garden tour are donated to local, state and national horticultural and conservation organizations with a focus on urban landscape within Boston and beyond.  Since its formation, the Beacon Hill Garden Club has donated more than one million dollars to such organizations providing support to important landscape projects and initiatives that include the renovation of the Brewer Fountain and Liberty Mall on the Boston Common and the replacement of willow trees on the Charles River Esplanade.  

The book concludes with a brief history of Beacon Hill, a neighborhood of 9,000 residents, that is described as quirky, convenient, livable, neighborly and sustained by its gardens whose natural beauty provides quiet space "remote from the hustle and bustle of city life." A street map of the neighborhood is included as well as a list of active club members with gardens featured in the book.

Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill: Creating Green Spaces in Urban Places is thoughtfully written, beautifully designed and expertly photographed.  The book succeeds on multiple levels and is both a guide and visual record of the gardens of Beacon Hill as well as a resource for the creation of similar spaces in the urban environment.    

To order a copy email the Beacon Hill Garden Club at  info@beaconhillgardenclub.org. Please include "Book Order" in the subject line.

Patrice Todisco writes about parks, gardens and the public realm at www.landscapenotes.com.

by Betty Sanders

BettyOnGardening.com

 

It was an unusual June - chilly days followed by scorching heat and torrential downpours - with probably twelve inches or more of rain recorded once the record books close.  The good news is that the rain we received during the heat wave helped plants survive; and the rain we got after the heat wave ended replenished the ground water.  But, heat or not, gardeners need to keep working.

 

Weeding in July should be a top priority

Weeds have sprung up everywhere.  They need to be pulled, hoed out or otherwise removed so they do not steal the light and water from the plants you want to grow. Remember that each weed produces hundreds or thousands of weed seeds if you ignore them.

 

Many pests also appreciated the rain.  Spread iron phosphate-based products to kill slugs and snails without endangering pets, wildlife or the environment.  Change the water in birdbaths at least once a week and empty out anything else that may have collected water around your yard to prevent mosquitoes from breeding.

 

 

Heat and humidity bring another garden problem.  Mildew and fungal

Powdery mildew thrives in humid weather

diseases flourish under hot humid conditions.  You can control it before it ruins the look of garden phlox, monarda and other susceptible plants by spraying a solution of one tablespoon of baking soda in one gallon of water on the foliage.  Use a light touch with fertilizer.  Too much nitrogen will promote tender growth, which is highly susceptible to infection.

 

Roses are particularly susceptible to powdery mildew and proper horticultural practices are better insurance than lots of chemicals in controlling it.  Plant roses where they get at least six hours a day of sunlight and ensure good air circulation by avoiding crowding plants.  Clean up any fallen leaves or twigs and remove dead flowers. 

 

Powdery mildew

Remove any diseased leaves or plants as soon as you spot them among your perennials. Cut back the seed heads or declining foliage of the June bloomers such as columbine and peonies.  Trim back any plants that are outgrowing their allotted space in the garden so every plant gets the air and light they need. Some perennials will become thugs if left unchallenged.  You will actually have bushier plants and more flowers on the fall bloomers you trim back by half now.

 

In the vegetable garden, continue to plant lettuce, swiss chard, carrots and beets.  Do a second plantings of green beans and squash to extend the season.  All your hot weather crops - including tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers and melon - must be in the ground in order to ripen before the cool weather sets in.

 

Watering.  Lawns can go dormant during heat but, unless we see an inch of rain each week, vegetable gardens, annuals, containers and newly planted perennials, shrubs and trees may need a deep watering.

 

Deer tick nymphs, present now in lawns, gardens, parks and woodlands, are most responsible for spreading Lyme disease as well as babesiosis and anaplasmosis, two serious bacterial infections. Use repellents when outside and conduct frequent tick checks on family members and pets.  For more information, go to www.mass.gov/dph/tick. 

 

  

 

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Look for more gardening tips at BettyOnGardening.com.