Sometimes you want to come outside for a breath of air. Sit on a bench at dusk under the mock orange. Walk on a grass path and listen to a fountain playing over stone. Sometimes you want a bit of earth.

We have wildflowers here, and we have flowers people have tended over centuries. You can find wild rose pogonia orchids in a high bog — and tree peonies in a garden designed by Fletcher Steele with a curved water stair.

Berkshire gardens can be grand with lime walks and sculpture. A hundred years ago a Napoli farmer could wind up here as head gardener of a Gided Age mansion, growing five kinds of stone fruit on the same tree. But then again, they can be unexpected and beautifully simple. A lilac walk blooms in an old town park. Families plant scarlet runner beans and milkweed for the monarch butterflies.

Gardens in the Berkshires

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Art OMI

The Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, N.Y., has hosted more than 2,000 artists from more than 100 countries in its residencies in dance and music, art and architecture, writing and translation.

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Peter Gerakaris

Berkshire Botanical Garden

In a quiet corner of Stockbridge, the Berkshire Botanical Garden has cared for 20 acres of land since 1934. The gardens open to visitors from May to early October, with art exhibits, talks and events, classes and workshops year-round.

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Paul Rocheleau / Chesterwood

Chesterwood

In a studio with tall windows letting in the north light, Daniel Chester French created the figure of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. Today contemporary sculpture lines the paths and gardens in the summer and fall.

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Field Farm / Photo by Kate Abbott

Field Farm

Nature and Modern art mingle at Field Farm in Williamstown. The Trustees of Reservations maintains the outoor sculpture garden and trails— open to the public from sunrise to sunset all year — and will open the Folly for art tours occasionally.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Naumkeag

The gardens of the Choate family’s Gilded Age ‘cottage’ have a name around the world for their Blue Stairs, tree peonies and roses, and they invite the community in year-round.

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Sarah Kenyon / Courtesy of The Mount

The Mount

Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, wrote many of her best-known novels in this house, in the 10 years she lived in Lenox — from The House of Mirth to Ethan Frome. Her house is now a museum, a center of writing, music and performance, landscape and gardens, dedicated to keeping her spirit alive.

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R. Cheek, Trustees of Reservations

Bartholomew’s Cobble

A rare outcrop of quartzite and marble along the Housatonic River nurtures more than 800 kinds of plants. Bartholomew’s Cobble shelters one of the greatest diversities of ferns in North America and as many as 50 varieties of wildflowers.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Canoe Meadows

Mass Audubon, the statewide conservation nonprofit, protects four wildlife sanctuaries in the Central and Southern Berkshires. At Canoe Meadows in Pittsfield, flat and easy trails wander along the Housatonic River, sheltering migrating birds and butterflies in the meadow, and otters and turtles along the water (and now and then a bear).

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Bryant homestead

Along the Westfield River Valley, William Cullen Bryant, editor and publisher of the New York Evening Post for many years, wrote meditative verse and influenced 19th-century land conservation.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

BNRC

The Berkshire Natural Resources Council is a countywide land trust and nonprofit caring for trails and open spaces throughout the Berkshires.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Forge Project

A new collaboration celebrates Native and Indigenous communities across the Americas and builds relationships through the land and local food, arts and conversations, activism and more.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Azalea Fields

Pittsfield State Forest on the Taconic ridge has many claims to fame — Balance Rock, and Berry Pond, the highest natural body of water in Massachusetts, and 30 miles of trails.

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Photo by Sandrine

Nutwood Farm

Seva and Kaylan Water are growing hazelnuts at their farm in cummington. Hazelnuts are not yet for sale at the farm (in part because husking them is still a process by hand), but the farmers hold harvest days in the fall.

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Mass Audubon / Photo by Kate Abbott

Pleasant Valley

Mass Audubon, the statewide conservation nonprofit, protects four wildlife sanctuaries in the Central and Southern Berkshires. At Pleasant Valley in Lenox, their local headquarters lead into a boardwalk around a beaver pond and trails climb the slopes of Lenox Mountain.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Helia Native Nursery

Horticulturalist Bridghe McCracken founded Helia Native Nursery three years ago to save Berkshire native plants and seeds, to grow native plants and to work with gardeners and landscapers to restore the Berkshire ecosystem.

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Photo by Susan Geller

Whitney’s Farm Market

From spring to fall, Whitney’s Farm Market on Route 8 is open with greens, fruits and vegetables, pick-your-own berries in season, deli sandwiches and ice cream, and the garden center carries perennial and annual flowers and more.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Hilltop Orchards

At Hilltop Orchards, the Vittori family grow apples and make cider and wine on 200 acres. A brother and sister, John and Wendy, bought the orchard more than 30 years ago and preserved the land. They have a farm store and trails open year-round.

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Photo by Susan Geller

Dream Away Lodge

The Dream Away Lodge is a road house, a locally sourced restaurant, a lounge and a labyrinth … its a 200-year-old farmhouse on the edge of October Mountain State Forest in Becket, and it has been a center of live music for decades.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

HooRWA

The Hoosic River Watershed association is a group of local people who want to restore and conserve the river and bring people to enjoy it — paddling, biking and wandering along the bank or soaking your feet as you watch a migrating solitary sandpiper at the water’s edge.

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Photo by Thom Smith

Lime Kiln

Two loops of trail cross the pasture lands of an old farm, past a seasonal pond and wetlands, and hayfields where bluebirds nest, and 50 kinds of butterflies forage. Signs of the old farm remain in stone walls and the historic kiln that gives the sanctuary its name.

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Photo by Kate Abbott

Tracy Brook

In early June, the herons are nesting. Mass Audubon protects one of the largest blue heronries in the county at one of the newest sanctuaries, a wetland and woodland on Tracy Brook in Richmond. It has no marked trails, but guided walks explore the area.

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