Garden Visits: Vermont

Phlox Fest at Perennial Pleasures

While in Vermont last week, JoAnn and I visited several nurseries and gardens, including Perennial Pleasures, in East Hardwick, Vt., which grows over 900 varieties of flowers, herbs, and shrubs, and specializes in heirloom plants. We were there during their annual Phlox Fest,  two weeks in the summer when most of their 137 varieties of phlox are blooming, a good time to see and smell all the many colors, sizes, and fragrances of phlox. We took an hour long tour of the garden, which the owner Rachel began more than 30 years ago behind her family home.  The gardens are the main attraction, but there are also plants and herbs for sale, a gift shop, and an outdoor tea room. They do a big mail order business too.

Phlox Collection

Old fashioned hosta

Delphinium

Delphinium

Cimicifuga

Tea in the garden

Another day we went to JoAnn's favorite nursery, Cady's Falls, in Morrisville, Vt. I have been to a lot of nurseries, but this was seriously one of the best. The gardens are beautiful, filled with unusual plants and garden art. Everywhere you turned it seemed there was something more interesting to look at--plants, sculpture, ponds, conifers, containers, trees. These are my favorite kind of nurseries, which are really gardens that happen to sell plants too.  This nursery specializes in weeping conifers, and I have never seen so many unusual specimens of trees and shrubs. The nursery itself has beautiful herbaceous and woody plants, and I saw my first Itoh peonies. I kept trying to figure out if I could stuff any plants in my carryon bag...it's not easy to visit such a quality nursery and leave empty handed. But I left with  lots of ideas and inspiration.  And really, there's nothing more fun than to visit a beautiful nursery with a gardening pal.

Great containers

Shady gardens around the house

Bog gardens

Girl under tree

Art everywhere

Loved this pile of stones planted with sedums and moss

Hostas

Loved these troughs, but boy were they heavy