A Pocket of Beauty
On the side lawn of the society’s 102-year-old Green Briar Jam Kitchen, a cream tea is being served throughout the four-hour tour of eight private area gardens. Beneath a large white tent, vases of just-picked flowers adorn outdoor tables where volunteers are serving sandwiches with watercress and nasturtiums, scones with whipped cream and strawberry jam, and, of course, pots of freshly brewed tea. Wearing a long, pale dress and pearls, Osterville harpist Andrea McCarthy deftly plucks the strings of her tall Celtic harp and the exquisite notes of Pachelbel’s Canon ripple over the heads of seated guests, mingling with the light clatter of dishes and lively conversation.
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The garden surrounding Hedge House features a mix of cultivated flowers and “volunteers,” such as the rangy sunflowers near the front door. |
This bucolic setting was a perfect place to start last year’s garden tour, for Green Briar’s wildflower garden is a pocket of beauty in which visitors are instructed in the nature of nature. Started in 1976 by Dr. Shirley Cross, the garden is filled with birdsongs and calls and all manner of winged creatures busily at work; neat woodchip paths lined with small rocks invite human guests to enter and explore. Markers identify by scientific name the plantings, ranging from waist-high ferns, mayflowers, and wild geraniums to golden ragwort, cardinal flower, and Virginia bluebells.You’ll find the commonplace skunk cabbage and Joe Pye weed too, but in this wildflower garden, everything seems uniquely lovely.
| The gardens at Windfall House, a bed and breakfast, are a riot of color and texture. A root cellar at Windfall is now a potting shed. |
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Maples, locusts, and apple trees provide cool shade for those who come to admire the elegant Queen Anne’s lace, brilliant red crocosmia, white daisies, bluish meadow sage, and pink musk mallow. Butterflies linger above Rosa rugosa and wild columbine, and so should you. Old-fashioned wooden chairs and benches invite visitors to relax and contemplate.
Hedge House
In Sandwich Village, a massive, impeccably trimmed privet hedge, 15 feet high in places, hides the Summer Street gardens and home of Bob King and Tobin Wirt. When the well-known Sandwich restaurateurs bought Hedge House from three spinster sisters and their mother in 1983, the property was overgrown and undeveloped.
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While a stone staircase is lined with ferns and potted plants. |
Now, a generous sweep of lush lawn is framed by hydrangeas, red and purple bee balm, dahlias, verbena, and fall-blooming Jerusalem artichoke. To the right of the checkerboard painted entrance to the 1838 white clapboard house are a climbing ‘White Dawn’ rose bush and purple clematis. A generous bed of orange impatiens on the left surrounds a kousa dogwood, “the first thing we planted when we bought the house,” remarks King.
A mature grape arbor at the rear of the house was “going strong” in 1940, and is bordered by a stand of 12-foot-tall sunflowers. “If you let the sunflowers dry up, it becomes an aviary,” says King. “The gold finches and red finches really make a racket.” The sunflowers, cosmos, and purple verbena here are welcome “volunteers” that require no special planting. “I’ll drop a few deadheads where they are growing, and they seed themselves,” King says.
Highlights on the open lawn include a high-rise topiary and a birdhouse atop a pole covered with cardinal vine and morning glories. On a small table, Wirt and King display old coins, glass fragments, and slag they found while working in the yard.
These gardeners, who utilize the town landfill’s free compost, have found that fertilizing morning glories produces more vine than bloom, but nasturtiums thrive with regular feeding. “Being in the same garden for 20 years, you learn the ropes,” says King.
Windfall House
Built in 1818, Windfall House is located on Old Main Street, once a stagecoach route into Sandwich. Now a six-room bed and breakfast, the shingle-sided house and grounds were bought seven years ago and restored by owner Ted Diggle. The trim, nicely detailed yard reflects a childhood interest in gardening that began when Diggle helped his grandfather with farm chores. “I spend three to five hours a day at the gardening, three seasons a year,” he says. “The garden is work, but it is pleasurable.”
A low, white picket fence, stonewalls, colorful impatiens, and tea roses convey a light, romantic atmosphere. The lighted gazebo and koi pond are popular features of the inn’s landscape, where guests often relax with a bottle of wine. Imported from Japan, the original 15 koi have increased to 30. “We’ve had guests from 40 countries, and they say this is like a little oasis,” says Diggle.
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The koi pond at Windfall House, a B&B, is a favorite resting spot for guests. |
What aspect of the gardens draws the most comment? “The gazebo,” he answers, “and my color combinations, like deep reds with light yellows and oranges. I put in a lot of perennials and fill in with annuals, such as impatiens, petunias, and coleus. I don’t have any favorite flowers; I like them all. Basically, I go for color.”
Outstanding plantings include hollies and hostas. This gardener uses fertilizer and lime, particularly Scott’s lawn products. While his arborvitae and roses suffered from the brutal 2004-05 winter, weather had little impact on the numerous ornamental birdbaths, bird houses, and feeders placed throughout the gardens. As a hummingbird whizzes into the yard, Diggle comments, “They like bee balm as much as the feeders.”
“It’s still a work in progress here,” Diggle says. “But gardening is relaxing; it’s a good way to end the day.”
A Natural Beauty
Hydrangeas, rhododendrons, a white picket fence, and a fieldstone walk offer an attractive approach to Patricia Rinaldi’s two-story home on Christopher Hollow Road, where the front door’s sunny yellow is nicely picked up by St. John’s wort and calendula in the yard. To the right, sculpted evergreens and impatiens enhance the entrance to a side yard and small porch, where the invitation of a rocker, potted plants, and a single china cup is truly tempting.
The most striking feature of this property is a high, tiered terrace, planted with hostas and evergreens to accommodate a sloping, shaded terrain. The walkway that encircles the house opens at the rear onto a natural wooded hillside. This wild setting is accentuated by plantings of Japanese iris, blooming hostas, and lavender.
Woodland to Marsh Garden
When Bud and Shirley Lamson began clearing their property on Stonefield Drive in East Sandwich, they discovered the completely overgrown foundation of a 19th-century seminary for girls.
| Bud and Shirley Lamson’s home features a pretty path leading from woodland to marsh. |
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Certainly, Thornton Burgess, an early 20th-century pioneer conservationist, would have lauded the development of the Lamsons’ 1.3-acre marshside property for exploration of the native Cape Cod habitat. Well-developed trails through the property lead past honeysuckle, ferns, tangled grapevines, and other wild vegetation to the wetlands’ edge, where visitors have a fine view of a Sandwich salt marsh. On this serene nature hike, visitors encounter hostas, a stone bench, rhododendrons, and possibly a small creature or two. Cultivated flower gardens around the house contain an abundance of vinca, day lilies, pink roses, and pale yellow margaritas.
Other points of interest on the Burgess Society tour included the garden of Dave and Kay Merrell on Faunce Mountain Road, where handmade fieldstone paths surround a pretty goldfish pond and flower beds of roses and phlox, which draw hummingbirds and butterflies. In East Sandwich, the sound of running water pervades Stephen Lynch’s Farmersville Road gardens. Lynch designs and builds in-ground and hanging metal sculpture water systems and grows lily pads, iris, and evergreens.
The gardening philosophy of Jeri Housley at Windsor Drive in East Sandwich is to have creative fun, which she expresses by hanging small mirrors in a beach plum tree, placing gaily colored paper umbrellas beneath trees, and hanging a sign that says “Whatever” on her garden shed. Personal touches like Maine stones, bonsai, and “hand-me-down” plants from friends and family distinguish the expansive gardens that surround her home and large rear deck. “Everything comes from someone,” she says, pointing out her mother’s coral bells in a side garden. “That makes it special.”
Housley has a starter garden for seedlings; she also purchases plants from Mahoney’s Garden Center and uses their lawn products. “This is my therapy,” she comments. “This is my palette. I can’t paint, so I mix my flowers and colors here.”
The Sandwich Garden Tour and Tea, sponsored by the Thornton W. Burgess Society in East Sandwich, benefits the society’s educational programs, which sustain the lifelong work of children’s writer and naturalist Thornton Burgess, a Sandwich native. “Our outreach impacts about 35,000 children and adults annually,” says Bob King, president of the society’s Board of Trustees. The 2006 tour and tea will be held from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, July 19. For tickets and information, call (508) 888-6870 or visit www.thorntonburgess.org.
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