Windy Hill Orchard grows rows of winterberry bushes every year. You can walk into a sea of scarlet higher than your head, and they’re bright even on cold, cloudy afternoons.
Read articleNative plant nurseries bloom in small towns and reach out to local farms and land trusts. Garden centers have grown here for generations, from local farms to the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge.
What’s your first real taste of summer? (#this weekend)
You know the feeling when something hits home and you feel your expression shift instinctively — like tasting something that surprises you with its flavor?
Read article
We have liftoff into the Northern Lights (Nov 17 newsletter)
The berries make a vivid streak along the road, and there’s something buoyant about that wash of color now against a grey sky.
Read article
Exploring Cummington and the hilltowns in summer
It’s quiet up here. Sometimes I’ll come up to the ridge to get away for awhile, out the back roads … and find unexpected and creative places.
Read article
Wing and a Prayer wildflowers glow in high summer
I’m up at Amy Pulley’s native plant nursery on the ridge in Cummington, and it’s transformed in July into a sea of meadow flowers …
Read article
It’s a beautiful morning — I think I’ll go outside for awhile (May 19 newsletter)
The earth felt cool and damp, and the sun was warm on the church steps, and I was holding a clump of bergamot in my arms. Last Saturday, the Hilltown Seed Savers held a plant swap and exchange …
Read article
Berkshire Botanical Garden opens in spring
Trees that looked bare five days ago are shaggy with seed pods, and in the Berkshire Botanical Garden, magnolias are shedding petals. I love seeing things from the inside while people are working in their everyday clothes.
Read article
Vivid color is coming back to Naumkeag (May 5 Newsletter)
The tulips are glowing around the greenhouse at the foot of the hill, crimson red and flame orange and lemon. … I’ve caught an hour of sunlight on the morning I slipped down to Stockbridge for the daffodil festival, and it feels like pure radiant luck.
Read article
Flights of Fancy bring sparkling color to the garden
Growing up on a farm in Hong Kong, Mindy Lam saw the bright flashing colors of birds, and moths as large as her two hands. She would wade in the river, looking for shrimp and minnows and dragonflies. So it means a great deal to her now, as an internationally known jewelry artist living near Washington D.C., to bring her creations to the Berkshire Botanical Garden.
Read article
The Berkshires Farm Table Cookbook savors local stories
On a warm and quiet day, Elisa Spungen Bildner was sitting with Kim Wells, the farmer at East Mountain Farm in Williamstown. They had walked up into the woods where his pigs forage in summer …
Read article