Candlelit Garden Tour
On Saturday night Mr Chiots and I hopped in the car and headed off to South Paris for the Illuminated event at the McLaughlin Garden. I discovered this garden while reading about Bernard McLaughlin in The Grand Masters of Maine Gardening. We arrived at dusk with just enough time to catch a glimpse of the amazing gardens, all maintained by volunteers. This garden is truly spectacular, especially because it was all the cultivated by one man during the last 60 years of his life.
For this event they decorate the gardens with hundreds of candles. They’re on the ground, hanging from trees and in holders along the paths. Strolling through a garden by candlelight at dusk is truly a beautiful way to experience a garden. Visiting gardens in the day is lovely, but a garden can be equally lovely at dusk and at night. This would be a fabulous place to hold an event, especially an evening event.
Now that I caught a glimpse of this beautiful place I know I must head back, hopefully sooner rather than later. I find great inspiration in knowing that this garden was created by one man, alone, with lots of work over the course of his life. He moved to this place when he was in his mid thirties and turned these few acres of pasture into a beautifully wooded garden filled with 125 varieties of lilacs, a vast collection of woodland plants and a great multitude of hostas. There is definitely a reason he is known as the dean of Maine gardeners!
Have you ever been to a nighttime garden event?
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Friday Favorite: Local Garden Tours
This past week has been a whirlwind of garden tours. It seems every town has a tour during this week. On Sunday, Mr Chiots and I attended the garden tour series organized by a local land trust. We visited seven garden in all. Yesterday I attended the Camden garden tour and visited 5 gardens, two were home tours. Today I’m headed to the next garden in my local garden club series and tomorrow night we’re heading to the McLaughlin gardens Illuminated event, where they light up the garden with candles and lights. (Don’t mind the dirty fingernails, I am a gardener after all!)
It may seem like a lot, and it is, but summer is short in Maine so we have to get in all the touring we can. Next summer I plan on spending a long weekend near Philadelphia to visit Longwood, Chanticleer and Winterthur. If anyone is interested in joining up let me know, we can arrange a fun weekends of gardening!
I’ll be posting photos as I get through them, with work and other things I simply haven’t had the time to get through all the photos I took on all the tours. There was one garden in particular that was stunning and I’ll definitely be devoting a day to that garden. If you have local garden clubs and garden tours I highly recommend that you participate. Not only are you supporting local clubs and groups, you’ll be inspired by what you see and it will help you nail down your personal garden style.
Do you attend any local garden club tours? Do you plan vacations around garden destinations like Longwood?
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Friday Favorite: Plant Tags
This past week I visited a local public garden, it’s a small facility, so I was surprised when most of the plants were labeled. I love a place that has plant tags because I always want to know varieties. In my photos you will find both photos of the plant and the tags.
I would love to add tags to my garden but I’m not sure exactly which method I would use. For right now I keep track with photos, but it would definitely be nice to have things labeled since I get a decent number of visitors. Tagging plants is both an investment in time and money though and I’m not sure if I want to dedicate any of my gardening time to that right now. Perhaps that’s a good future project, something to tackle during one of our long Maine winters.
Do you have any plants tagged in your garden?
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Inspiration
I’m lucky that there are tons of lovely gardens nearby to visit. This is perfect for me since I’m trying to build a good database of photos of a wide variety plants. I sell photos to magazines and often get requests for specific cultivars. Earlier this week I stopped at the Merryspring Nature Center in Camden, Maine and took a few photos. I’ll post more photos from the gardens later this week, but I was drawn to this verbascum.
Unfortunately, the tag wasn’t very readable so I will need to do some sleuthing to figure out the name of this specific variety.
It’s quite a lovely plant, no doubt something that I can find seed for when I figure out what it’s called. I love tall plants like this, they can add such drama to a border. No doubt since it’s a mullein family plant it is healthy for the garden. Toby Hemenway, author of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition explains that mullein has a spike root that pulls minerals deep from within the soil. I’m always looking for plants that are both beautiful and beneficial.
Have you seen a must have plant recently?
