Scenes from Western Massachusetts
We hopped back and forth between N.Y. and Mass. as we headed north, then swung back through Mass. as we headed south from Vermont. First up was the Berkshire Botanical Garden, which I was honestly …
Category: Flowers
Architecture / Art / Flowers / Museums
The Shelburne Museum, Part 3
This is our third and last post on the Shelburne Museum (see Part 1 and Part 2). The parents of the Museum’s founder were collectors of French Impressionist masterpieces. It is amusing to think how …
The Shelburne Museum, Part 1
The Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vt., almost defies description. It is certainly not what you’d expect in the traditional sense of a “museum.” Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960) was a pioneering collector of American folk art. …
Untermyer Park and Gardens
The Untermyer Park and Gardens in Yonkers, N.Y., are the 43-acre remnant of Samuel Untermyer’s original 150-acre estate, “Greystone”. It is situated on steep land rising from the Hudson River, and as such has glorious …
Leonard J. Buck Garden
The Leonard J. Buck Garden in Far Hills, N.J. came on my radar as “one of the premier rock gardens in the Eastern United States”, and after our research for Japan Day back in 2020, …
Sites in Central & North Jersey
While meandering our way from Central New Jersey up towards the New York border, we listened to Blind Faith by Joe McGinniss; this is a true crime book that took place near where I grew …
The New Jersey Botanical Garden
The New Jersey Botanical Garden was an unexpected delight, and it was free! And we got very lucky because it had been pouring on the day of our visit, but stopped just as we arrived, …
Architecture / Flowers / History / Museums
The Nemours Estate
The last of the du Pont-related visits we made in Wilmington, Del., was also the most opulent – the Nemours Estate (the other visits were Hagley and Winterthur). This 200-acre “country estate” has a 77 …
Architecture / Flowers / History / Museums
Winterthur Museum and Gardens
Winterthur, pronounced “winter-tour” and named after an ancestral home in Winterthur, Switzerland, is one of the famous du Pont-related estates in Wilmington, Del., (we also toured Hagley and Nemours, and they are very different experiences). …
The Marian Coffin Gardens at Gilbraltar
In 1844 John Rodney Brinkle built an Italianate mansion in Wilmington, Del., and named it Gibraltar for the high, rocky outcropping upon which it was built. 55 years later, Hugh Rodney Sharp and his wife Isabella …