GARDENING ANEW: FRESH PERSPECTIVES ON THE GARDEN
August 24 -26, 2012
Featured Speaker: Internationally Renowned Landscape
Designer Edwina von Gal
Co-sponsored by Hollister House Garden and the Garden
Conservancy
The
French may have their Riviera but everyone in the garden world knows Hollister
House is the place to be in August.
A
compelling three-day garden cornucopia features an all-star horticultural
speaker lineup – including my garden friends Stephen Orr, Bill Thomas and Paige
Dickey –in addition to a swanky cocktail party, champagne breakfast, garden
tours, a rare plant sale, book singings and lectures.
With
concern for the environment ascendant and the desire to continually refine our
own backyard artistry ever present, Hollister House Garden’s third biennial
Garden Study Weekend is dedicated to exploring innovative and sustainable
ideas about gardening from both the imaginative and practical point of
view. The three day, late summer program includes a stylish cocktail party, an
all-day seminar, plant and book sales, champagne breakfast and garden tours.
The Garden Study Weekend launched in 2008 and has grown to one of the leading
summer gardening events in New England.
This
year’s program of thought-provoking lectures will examine the topic of Gardening
Anew: Fresh Perspectives on the Garden. The featured speaker is Edwina von
Gal, principal of her own celebrated international landscape design firm, who
will be joined by several outstanding professional horticulturists. They will
address a wide spectrum of ideas on new ways to garden encompassing the
knowledgeable use of native plants with attention to their form and function,
sophisticated solutions found in the soil, and examples of thinking outside the
box in the spirit of experimentation and innovation. The Garden
Conservancy, a national organization dedicated to preserving exceptional
American gardens, is co-sponsoring the event with Hollister House Garden.
Slated
for August 24, 25 and 26, 2012 in Washington, Connecticut, Garden Study Weekend
III gets underway at a gala Friday evening cocktail party at the Washington
Montessori School where participants may informally mingle with speakers and
fellow garden enthusiasts. There will also be the opportunity for early buying
at the rare plant sale.
Saturday
symposium features wonderful speakers, books and plants
Saturday’s
symposium takes place at the Washington Montessori School in comfortable,
air-conditioned spaces with up-to-date lecture facilities. A delicious buffet
luncheon, a sale of beautifully written and illustrated garden books, a plant
sale featuring a select group of New England’s finest specialty plant growers
and a ‘show & tell’ plant talk are included in the all-day agenda.
Stephen
Orr, Editorial
Director of Gardening at Martha Stewart Living, popular blogger and
author of Tomorrow’s Garden: Designs and Inspiration for a New Age of
Sustainable Gardening, published in 2011, will moderate the conversation
and welcome each lecturer.
Featured
speaker Edwina von Gal, known for her elegant, harmonious landscapes
that emphasize design blending effortlessly with nature, will speak from
personal experience on Altered Perspectives: An Unexpected Life in the Garden.
Her approach embraces native plants in spare arrangements that allow the
landscape to speak for itself. Her many high profile projects include
work s for minimalists Calvin Klein and Richard Serra as well as creation of
the whimsical topiary animals gracing the Channel Gardens in New York City’s
Rockefeller Center. She is known for creating “intimate expanses” and her
garden designs have been published in the New York Times, House Beautiful,
House & Garden, Garden Design and Vogue as well as in many
books. She is presently involved in restoring large tracts of her own land in
Panama where cattle ranching has seriously compromised the terrain, and is
directing the Azuero Earth Project, a Panama-based organization focused on
intelligent land stewardship and nature conservation in that country’s
endangered dry forest.
Other
thought-provoking speakers on Saturday’s seminar roster include:
William
Cullina is
Executive Director of the 250-acre, organic Coastal Maine Botanical Garden in
Boothbay, ME. His topic is What Do You Mean I’m Not a Perennial: Flowering
Shrubs for Perennial Companionship, sharing knowledge of his favorite
native flowering shrubs and how they bring form, texture, color and wildlife to
the garden.
Eric
T. Fleisher is
Director of Horticulture, Battery Park City Parks Conservancy, New York, NY. He
will speak on Managing the Environment: An Adaptive Challenge. Over 25
years, he has brought this 37-acre oasis of parkland on the Hudson River to the
forefront as the only public garden space in New York to be maintained
completely organically. The solution he has found is in the soil and he will
discuss balanced soil ecology, composting, water conservation and nontoxic pest
and disease control.
Bill
Thomas is
Executive Director of Chanticleer Foundation, Wayne, PA. Chanticleer is one of
the most exquisite and exciting public gardens in the northeast. He is a
plantsman, designer and a manager of the highest standards and will speak on Chanticleer:
An Insider’s View, illuminating the visual, textural, auditory and
olfactory dimensions of the 48-acre estate on Philadelphia’s Main Line.
In
the early morning and at coffee and lunch breaks there will be opportunities to
purchase choice plants for the late season garden from Broken Arrow Nursery (Hamden,
CT), Falls Village Flower Farm, (Falls Village, CT), O’Brien Nurserymen
(Granby, CT), Opus (Little Compton, RI), Rocky Dale Gardens (Bristol, VT),
Sunny Border Nurseries (wholesale, Kensington, CT), Umbrella Factory Gardens
(Charlestown, RI) and Avant Gardens (Dartmouth, MA).
Three
leading horticulturists -- Page Dickey, prolific garden writer and
popular lecturer; Marco Polo Stufano, founding director of horticulture
at Wave Hill in the Bronx and co-chair of the Garden Conservancy Screening Committee,
and Adam Wheeler, plantsman extraordinaire at Broken Arrow
Nursery – will be on hand to offer practical expertise during a Show & Tell
demonstration at the plant sale. Garden books selected by Washington Depot’s
treasured independent bookseller, The Hickory Stick, will also be for sale,
many authored by symposium speakers and available for signing.
Sunday
Open Days Tours Unlatch the Gates to Private Gardens
The
weekend also offers participants the opportunities to experience and explore in
person several outstanding gardens. Early birds can choose to start the day
with a champagne breakfast on the beautiful rear lawn at the romantic country
garden at Hollister House in Washington, CT. The grand finale on Sunday is when
the Garden Conservancy opens four exceptional private gardens in nearby
Litchfield and Roxbury as part of its national Open Days program. Three of them
– The Garden of Bruce Schnitzer & Alexandra Champalimaud, the Leva Garden
and Opal House gardens – are on the Open Days circuit for the first time.
Hollister House Garden is also featured on the Sunday tour.
Tickets
and Registration
Pre-registration
is required for the Garden Study Weekend. A combination package including the
festive Friday evening cocktail party, the entire Saturday program (with
continental breakfast and buffet lunch) and Sunday morning Champagne Breakfast
is $245 ($230 for Garden Conservancy or Hollister House Garden members.)
Separately,
the Friday evening cocktail party is $75 for non‐members ($65 for GC and HHG members).
The
all‐day Saturday ticket costs $160
for non‐members ($150 for GC and HHG
members). The rare plant sale is open to the general public after 1 p.m., free
of charge.
The
Sunday morning Champagne Breakfast is $25 ($20 for GC and HHG members).
Please
note that due to parking and seating limitations, tickets for both Friday and
Saturday events are strictly limited.
The
Open Days garden tours on Sunday are priced separately at $5 per person per
garden. Advance tickets are available online at www.gardenconservancy.org (please allow
time for shipping) or in person at the gardens on the tour.
Registration
is not required for Sunday’s Open Day tours. Maps will be provided for all
participants at Hollister House Garden Study seminar.
Hollister House Garden, created by George Schoellkopf, is a classic garden in
the English manner.
It has a loosely formal structure informally planted in generous abundance with
both common and exotic plants in subtle and sometimes surprising color
combinations. Situated on a sloping hill behind an 18th‐century rambling farmhouse, high walls and hedges
divide three separate
garden rooms and open to create appealing vistas of the landscape.
The Garden Conservancy is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1989
to preserve America’s
exceptional gardens for the education and enjoyment of the public. It partners
with garden owners and public and private organizations to harness
legal, horticultural, and financial resources to secure a garden's
future. The Conservancy also encourages greater appreciation of the
important role gardens play in America’s cultural and natural heritage through
educational programs and through its Open Days garden visiting program.
