Display Garden
The Display Garden conveys the feeling and atmosphere of a “working garden”. It has evolved over the last six years from its cutting and vegetable garden roots to garden beds designed for information and inspiration. The garden beds invite you to slow your pace and enjoy the intriguing and imaginative combinations of the wide variety of plants.
Children can play in the Bamboo Grove (Phyllostachys aureosulcata) which borders the Display Garden, and marvel at its other-worldliness as the canes clink together in the wind. We use cut bamboo canes for many projects, including a fence which supports sweet peas and summer flowering vines, and bamboo trellis and pergola that grace a pathway and shade a sitting area.
The restored 1901 Lord & Burnham greenhouse is open to tour daily. Each year we spend the winter and early spring propagating almost 2,000 plants for the gardens.
The William F. and M. Kathleen Church Cutting Garden is rich in color and fragrance and provides cut flowers that we use in arrangements for the house just as gardeners here have done over the last one hundred years.
Dwarf shrubs intermingle with perennials, annuals and even ornamental vegetables in the Display Garden beds, located adjacent to the Cutting Garden. We have included plants which are surprising in their subtle beauty, compelling you to stop in your tracks to appreciate them. We have also taken care to select low-maintenance plants that have a long season of interest and plants that please the senses.
The Display Garden is also a collector’s garden that changes every year as we trial new plants and rediscover forgotten favorites. Some of our tried and true favorites include:
- Geranium ‘Rozanne’, which blooms non-stop from May to hard frost
- Eryngium, stiff, thistle-like electric blue flowers that linger through July and fade to a soft beige
- African Blue Basil, a highly fragrant, non-bolting, non-culinary basil. Purple flower spikes from July to frost top soft green, purple veined leaves on a 24”x24” clump
- Phlox ‘Natural Feelings’, a mildew resistant garden phlox whose peculiar pink flower clusters are detailed with green, lingers for months
- View more of the plants...
Dozens of containers of handsome and unusual specimen plants including dwarf alpines, succulents, and tender tropicals grace the Container Bed, the edges of the pool, choice spots in garden borders, and under the refreshing shade provided by the grape arbor.
Our Vegetable Garden feeds staff, volunteers, and occasionally the local soup kitchen. Historically, this garden grew over 30 different vegetables for the family and household staff.
The Display Garden has been undergoing a redesign over the past 3 years, and continues to be a work in progress. We look forward to all the challenges and opportunities the changes will present, and hope that you will visit often to witness the results.
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Sunday, February 12
Sailor’s Valentine Party -
Friday, February 17
For the Love of Jazz and Chocolate -
Monday, February 20
- Friday, February 24
Blithewold February Vacation Camp
Upcoming events
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Spring tease
(Jan 30, '12)
It’s still January for at least for another day or so, but it looks strangely an awful lot like mid-February – or even March here and there, and feels about the same. My brain thinks that means that May is right around the corner. But it isn’t. Not by a long shot. We can’t have ... -
FEBRUARY 1904 – EGYPT
(Feb 01, '12)
FEBRUARY 1904 – EGYPT February 1st 1904 found Marjorie and her chaperone Miss Helen Macartnay steaming south toward the old historic city of Luxor, site of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. Arriving in the evening, they moored directly beneath … Continue reading
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