Well, it’s raining today in New York City — about a half hour ago, it was coming in my open windows at a slant, so hard that I had a little flood on the kitchen floor.
Which means it may not be a great weekend, to visit the gardens in western Connecticut that are the subject of my annual garden tour for The New York Times, published in today’s paper: “Public Gardens Turn on the Charm.”
Bad timing… but as I say in my lede:
IF you are still bummed by the endless 2011 winter and sunless spring, here’s a way to put your blues away: Get out into a public garden. They weathered many tough months too…”
This year’s selection included an example designed by Gertrude Jekyll, the famed English garden designer, who “approached gardens as a painter might, striving for an overall effect. She favored drifts of color, a lush mix of flowers, leaves of many shapes and a variety of textures.” Jekyll, who over a lifetime, created some 400 gardens, had only three jobs in the U.S., and this one — at Glebe House — is the only survivor.
My article also includes the garden at Hill-Stead designed by Beatrix Farrand, Wickham Park, the Bellamy-Ferriday House and Garden, and Elizabeth Park, whose rose garden is pictured here.
And if Connecticut doesn’t catch your fancy, last year I did “A Garden Crawl through the Garden State,” which was preceded in 2009 by “Philadelphia’s Gardens of Earthy Delights,” and in 2007 by “The Hudson Valley’s Fields of Joy.”