The Real Gardens of Amenia
Saturday, July 8, 2023 | 10 am - 2 pm

TOUR INFORMATION
The title of this year’s garden tour is "The Real Gardens of Amenia,” reflecting our hope to highlight many different types of gardens now and in future years.  The Garden Club of Amenia is made up of garden enthusiasts so we want to showcase real gardens.  Many gardeners don't have the time or resources to have perfectly manicured gardens tended by staff, but while our gardens may not be perfect, we love them and hope our visitors will love them too while enjoying learning from what our garden hosts have done in their gardens.

Tour Guidelines

• The gardens are open rain or shine
• If you are not feeling well, please be considerate to our garden hosts and visitors and stay home. 
• Please no pets are permitted at the gardens
• All children must be under parental control at all times
• There are no bathroom facilities available at the gardens

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FEATURED GARDENS

Broccoli Hall - Maxine Paetro
Visitors to Broccoli Hall describe this English-style cottage garden as "incredible," "inspirational," "magical"-and they come back again and again.  Starting in 1985 with 1.5 acres of bare earth, Maxine Paetro collaborated with horticulturist Tim Steinhoff to create a series of enchanting garden rooms.  Broccoli Hall offers an apple tunnel; a brick courtyard; a lavish display of spring bulbs blooming with crabapples in May; an extensive border of irises, peonies, and old shrub roses flowering in June; a tree house with long views; and a secret woodland garden with a teddy bears' picnic.  We have some whimsical rustic carvings by woodsman/artisan Hoppy Quick: new bears, new stairs, new chairs, and some exceptionally charming bird feeders.  Photos and magazine stories about Broccoli Hall can be viewed at www.broccolihall.com.  In 2010, Broccoli Hall was expanded to five acres, and two new mud ponds were installed.  This is where we began a breeding program-but we don't sell our fish.  See the "elusive kishusui" project in progress at www.kishusui.com.

The Durbridge Garden - Andy Durbridge
After moving to this location in 2007, and recognizing the beautiful location, views, and potential, we embarked on a new garden journey.  We have since tried to enhance the landscape by following a basic guide: benefiting wildlife, especially the birdlife, and working toward a sustainably balanced home landscape that features multi-season interest, fun plants from all groups, and a layout with interest.  Hopefully a garden to use and enjoy!  There are vistas, loosely themed and more naturalistic areas, along with a small orchard, a grove of maturing Stewartia trees, interesting shrubs and trees, ornamental perennials and grasses, and much more!  The home terrace area always features some ornament, and a changing seasonal container planting, and there is an ongoing desire to enhance and manage the existing planting.  There is always something newly added to this garden, which could change by the time you visit!  But there is an ongoing need to continue taking care of the increasingly valuable maturing landscape, especially when climate change and plant pests throw up new challenges.  The garden strives to be ‘A Real Garden’ by including a lot of plants and examples that anyone can take away as an idea or wish for their own garden space.  We have “borrowed views,” a few “borrowed ideas,” with some originality thrown in, and plants to not live without, all created by the homeowners and hopefully inspiring other real gardeners!

The Garden of Nancy Link
My garden is always a challenge, from how many yards of mulch I need, to why that batch of poppies bloom (I didn't plant that color, but they were my father’s favorite).  When I came to Wassaic, nearly 15 years ago, there was just patchy grass, a dead tree and burn bins.  I spent more than one season rototilling each area until I wasn’t sure it was worth it given all the stones.  It’s been a kind of magic to add a trellis outside my daughter’s room, to incorporate existing natural features into my own plans (what could I plant in the heavy soggy soil by the stone wall?).  We get so little sunlight in the hamlet (we’re one of the least sunny locations in Dutchess County) that I try to find - or create - brightness everywhere I can.  I'm using more native plants each year.  And every season brings a new challenge: from using an organic fertilizer that won’t contaminate the well water to chasing off the bunnies and deer (my daughter won’t let her beagle help with that problem).  Part of the fun is discovering what else I can do, how it can grow.  My gardens are an extension of my home; I hope you find comfort and a little bit of magic in them.

Jade Hill – Paul Arcario
Started thirty years ago as a rocky hillside that was mostly lawn, Jade Hill has grown into a stroll garden designed to be a tapestry of texture and foliage colors.  The garden borders the wetlands that were once Lake Amenia, on the site of what was intended to become a lakeside community consisting of dozens of small lots.  Over the years we were able to acquire some of the adjacent parcels, which quickly became new garden rooms, including the gold-themed garden, viewed from a cantilevered pavilion meant to show off carved wood window panels purchased years ago at a flea market.  Small pools were dug for fish and lotus, and various lanterns, stones, containers, and ornaments (Don’s touch!) accompany the plants.  Now thirty years old, Jade Hill is an ageing yet resilient garden.  Some favorite trees planted early on are lovely specimens now, others have struggled with successive pests such as wooly adelgid and, last year, spongy moth.  The garden has become a lesson in the ephemeral, but also, to paraphrase the poet Basho, a place to express gratitude to the blossoms.  Dedicating opening the garden to my beloved late partner, Don Walker.

Neverest - Leo Blackman & Ken Monteiro
When we bought our house 20 years ago, we had never gardened.  Luckily our neighbor and now good friend Marsha Kaufman is an expert.  She taught us how to prepare a bed and take care of plants and she designed most of our gardens.  As we have become more confident, we have taken over the design of new beds and installed a very large vegetable garden.  Our property has its challenges: a steep slope and lots of dry shade under mature hemlock trees.  As we have become more aware of the value of native plants, we have tried to include as many as we can in new beds and replace dead plants with native ones.  We even removed a section of our lawn last year and put in two new native beds.  We are focused on removing invasive plants including a large area of Japanese pachysandra that was here when we bought the house.  When you visit, you will see the large expanse of black plastic we are using to kill it.  We also have a number of containers that change from year to year providing an outlet for trying new plants and combinations.


Teeniepaw Cottage Garden - Emily FullerI am an artist that is interested in color, pattern and texture.  My garden is inspired by the garden I grew up with on the north shore of Long Island (Oyster Bay Cove/Laurel Hollow).  Though my house is on a one acre plot, I am fortunate to have woods on the north side of my land to protect me.   The garden takes up about 2/3 of an acre and is divided into several parts.  The front part by the road is planted with low and hardy evergreen bushes.  Then lilac bushes just put in last year give privacy from the road.  The meandering gravel path creates time for strolling through the garden giving the viewer time to see how all the plants are doing.
On the north side of the house is a wave garden of boxwood bushes.  That part of the garden is inspired by the waves of clouds drifting in the sky.  (Wave gardens have been planted in Europe to enchant the eye).  In the west side of the house, the lawn that faced Delaverne Ridge, was relatively uninteresting.  In the last year and a half I have shrunk the size of that lawn below my house (facing Delaverne Ridge) to accommodate a continuous bed of flowers.  In these expanded beds I have planted pollinator flowers; some will bloom all summer attracting bees and other pollinator flying insects and birds.  
In short, my garden like all gardens is a work in progress and a delight to the eye.