A June Garden Tour at My Farm
June garden tours are well underway at my farm.
Occasionally, I agree to open my gardens for private walking tours. Most of them are conducted in the spring and early summer. Yesterday, we welcomed a group from the Aperture Foundation and some of its dedicated supporters. Aperture is a multi-platform publisher and center for the photo community. Founded in 1952 as a not-for-profit arts institution, Aperture looks to connect photographers and their audiences with each other - in print, in person and online.
I was very happy to have these guests at my farm. And fortunately, I was able to guide the tour myself before leaving for another business trip in the early afternoon. We walked through my gardens and allées, stopped to see the pool and fruit orchard, and visited my horses, chickens and peafowl. Here are some photos - enjoy.
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- Most of our tours start at the front gate of my home. All the guests receive a map of the property and a short introduction and history about the farm and how it has evolved over the years. Here, I also asked everyone to introduce themselves – it always makes the tour much more personal.
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- The tour then walked through my glass greenhouse and attached head house and then out to the flower cutting garden – it’s so full of colorful blooms this time of year.
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- Everyone always loves touring this area – I always try to answer as many gardening questions as possible.
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- We all admired the dianthus with its beautiful pink and white fringed margins.
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- Also blooming this week – the poppies. Poppies produce open flowers that come in many colors from crimson red to purple, lavender and pale pink. Poppies require very little care, whether they are sown from seed or planted when young – they just need full sun and well-drained soil.
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- The roses are looking spectacular this year. I talked about the many, many varieties I have – many of which are heirlooms that we moved from Lily Pond, my home in East Hampton, to here a few years ago.
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- This is called lady’s mantle. Lady’s mantle, Alchemilla vulgaris, is an attractive perennial plant. Its soft gray-green foliage is semi-round with scalloped-shaped leaves. In late spring and early summer, the plant produces lovely chartreuse blooms. I have lady’s mantle lining the main footpaths of the cutting garden.
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- I guided the group through the Pin Oak Allee, Quercus palustris, which looks fuller every week with its distinguishable lower, middle and upper branches – such a lovely stand of trees.
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- Another stop was the Party Lawn. On the left is my long clematis pergola, and on the right, the weeping hornbeams, Carpinus betulus Pendula. I love these weeping hornbeams – the branches of these trees gracefully weep creating an umbrella of foliage that reaches the ground.
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- We paused for a moment to look up into the trees – we could all hear the pollinating bees above. It was such a wonderful sound.
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- I walked the tour into the pool area where we saw my newly pruned purple columnar beech trees, Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck Purple’ – a splendid tree with deep-purple foliage that holds its color all season. Columnar beech trees reach 40 to 50 feet in height and only 10-feet wide which makes them perfect for tight spaces and interesting hedges.
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- Just beyond the pool is an allee of columnar beech trees which extends into the fruit orchard.
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- We just planted this fruit orchard in May of last year, and there are already many, many fruits growing. I told the group how rich our soil is and how we work hard to create our own nutrient-filled compost so all the plantings thrive.
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- We planted a variety of apple trees, plum trees, cherry trees, peach, pear and quince trees in this paddock.
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- And here is just one of the apple trees bursting with young fruits.
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- During the warmer months, I love to display tropical plants around the farm. In front of our stable offices are Bismarkia palms, Bismarckia nobilis, which grow from solitary trunks, gray to tan in color, and slightly bulging at the base.
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- Behind the stable, I showed everyone the many, many trees I am nurturing in containers before they are planted around the farm and in the woodland. We originally got these trees as bare-root cuttings and they’ve already grown quite a bit.
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- This enclosure used to be home to my peafowl, but now it houses my homing pigeons – about 30 to 40 gorgeous and rare birds I adopted from artist and pigeon expert, Duke Riley. The pigeons love their coop and yard.
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- My Black Shoulder Pied peacocks and their hen were out strolling nearby. My peafowl are all very curious – this male loves to walk, perch up high and watch the activity around the farm, especially by the stable.
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- We visited my baby Sebastopol gosslings. the Sebastopol goose originated in southeastern Europe, and is named after the Russian city. These goslings will weigh 12 to 14 pounds each when mature, and have long, soft-quilled frizzled feathers.
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- The garden behind my Summer House is always a favorite stop on the tour. This garden will soon be blooming with color. The large ginkgo tree in the back looked as majestic as ever in all its foliage.
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- I also plant boxwood in stone urns and place them on the Summer House garden terrace. These urns are emptied and covered during winter and then replanted every spring.
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- My longtime housekeeper, Laura, set up some refreshments on the lower terrace parterre outside my Winter House kitchen. I always like to offer guests some tasty treats at the end of our tours.
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- Here, Laura is pouring some cool pomegranate juice made using concentrate from our friends at POM Wonderful. http://www.pomwonderful.com/
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- The cookies are always made fresh in our test kitchen the day before by one of our test chefs at the New York office.
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- Of course, everyone loves seeing the doggies. Here are my Chow Chows, baby Emperor Han and his sister, Empress Qin. They came out for a brief visit and then went back into the house where it was much cooler and more comfortable for them.
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- Walking back toward the gate, the tour group saw my beautiful clematis growing under the pergola. Clematis is a genus of about 300-species. They are mostly vigorous, woody, climbing vines. They need at least six hours of sun a day, and should be planted in well-drained soil.
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- These plants are valued for their ability to climb, and to scramble up walls, fences and other structures. I have a variety of clematis in shades of white, purple and blue.
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- All the guests love my meandering clematis pergola – it was a nice ending to a pleasant early summer walk. Thanks for visiting my gardens, Aperture. You can follow Aperture on Instagram @aperturefnd.
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