Category: Columbia County Living

Happenings, Home, Garden, Design July 27, 2021July 25, 2021

Garden Conservancy Open Day in Canaan & Spencertown, Aug 1

The Garden Conservancy invites you to visit two beautiful gardens of Columbia County on view in Canaan and Spencertown on Sunday, August 1.

Rockland Farm – The garden comprises a variety of areas that flow one from another over about ten acres of our property. A 450-foot-long rock ledge runs parallel to the front drive and is topped by a dry garden in silver, gray and blue, with a thyme walk along one edge. Raised areas on the west side of the house feature exotic and tropical plants, many in containers. Behind the house is a sequence of garden rooms: a lavender garden contained within a raised hornbeam hedge; a perennial garden in pastels surrounding our pool; a water garden, fronted by a white garden and with a shade garden and rhododendron walk behind; a hot sundial and rock garden; and a fenced vegetable and cutting garden.

Landscape of Linda B. Horn – The restoration of my landscape has been the goal for fifteen years of living here after a move from Chicago. There are four restored ecosystems: wetlands, waterfall, domestic area of native grasses, and woodland. The last section of restoration was started last fall with eliminating dead trees and then new seeding. This year goldenrod was weed-wacked and new trees planted. The landscape was featured in a five-page article in the September 2017 issue of New York Cottages & Gardens. Native restoration workshops have also been held here through the Columbia Land Conservancy, Spencertown Academy, and Berkshire Botanical Garden.

DATE/TIME: Sunday, August 1, 2021 / 10am – 4pm

LOCATION: Rockland Farm – Canaan NY
Landscape of Linda B. Horn – Spencertown NY

ADMISSION: $10 per person
Children 12 and under are free

Pre-registration is REQUIRED for each garden. Pre-register for each on this website, except where specifically indicated otherwise. Children under 12 are free and do not need to be pre-registered if accompanied by pre-registered adult.
Capacity is limited. Sorry, no walk-ins allowed; no paper tickets or cash payments will be accepted on-site.

MORE:
gardenconservancy.org
facebook.com/The.Garden.Conservancy
instagram.com/thegardenconservancy

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Happenings, Home, Garden, Design June 17, 2021June 16, 2021

Spencertown Academy Virtual Lecture: “Vegetable Garden Planted, What Now?”, Jun 19

Spencertown Academy Arts Center presents “Vegetable Garden Planted, What Now?”, A Virtual Lecture with Ron and Jennifer Kujawski.

Though planning, preparation, and planting a vegetable garden takes some effort, the work, and rewards, have just begun. This presentation will look at post-planting efforts to sustain the garden and reap the rewards through the growing season. Topics covered include: summer maintenance, pest and disease management strategies, tips on harvesting, planning for a late season harvest, and cover cropping.

Ron & Jennifer Kujawski are a father-daughter gardening team who tend a 10,000 square foot garden in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Jennifer is a horticulturist and a writer and editor who works for a variety of organizations. Ron served as an Extension Educator in the Landscape, Nursery, and Urban Forestry Program at the University of Massachusetts. Now retired, he spends time as a horticultural writer and lecturer. His weekly columns appear in the Berkshire Eagle and The Berkshire Edge. He and his daughter co-authored the book: Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardeners Handbook. Their weekly gardening tips can be found on Instagram at @weekbyweekvegetablegardeners.

DATE/TIME: Saturday, June 19, 2021 / 4 pm – 5 pm

ADMISSION: Tickets are $10
To register, visit www.spencertownacademy.org.

MORE:
SpencertownAcademy.org
facebook.com/SpencertownAcademy
Phone: (518) 392-3693

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Happenings, Home, Garden, Design March 18, 2021March 16, 2021

Spencertown Academy Presents “Why Start Plants From Seed?” Virtual Talk by Mary Ann Iaccin, Mar 21

Spencertown Academy Arts Center launches the 2021 Hidden Gardens Virtual Lecture Series with a talk by Master Gardener Mary Ann Iaccino titled “Why Start Plants From Seed?” on Sunday March 21 via Zoom. The lecture will be about an hour, followed by a Q&A with participants.

“The pandemic created a booming interest in home gardening—from ‘Victory Gardens’ to growing vegetables in pots on rooftops. In our area, fenced vegetable gardens and raised beds cropped up everywhere last year,” says Madaline Sparks, Academy board member and co-chair of Hidden Gardens. It looks like the trend will continue, so we want to offer a little help to those who are trying for the first time or just want a refresher about starting plants from seed.”

“Starting your own vegetables and flowers from seed can be an economical way to fill garden space and enjoy a much wider variety of plants than you could find in any nursery,” says Iaccino. “There’s nothing more fun and hopeful than planning one’s summer garden when it’s still bitter cold outside.”

This lecture will cover getting a handle on where to start, and pin down the information found on seed packets and in catalogs. It will also investigate how to meet environmental conditions that are needed for seed germination at home and go through the process of starting seeds to transplanting strong seedlings into the garden.

Iaccino has been in the education field as a high school biology teacher, a museum educator, and as an adult education instructor. She started as a Master Gardener Volunteer in the 1990s when she lived in Dutchess County. After moving back home to the Hudson area in 2005, she joined the Master Gardener Volunteers of Columbia-Greene counties participating in presenting programs and workshops.

Additional topics and dates will be announced soon. The annual Hidden Garden Tour will take place on August 28, 2021 and, in addition to properties with beautiful landscapes and flower gardens, will feature various vegetable gardens.

DATE/TIME: Sunday March 21, 2021 / 1pm – 2:30pm

ADMISSION: Tickets are $10
To register, visit www.spencertownacademy.org.

MORE:
SpencertownAcademy.org
facebook.com/SpencertownAcademy
Phone: (518) 392-3693

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Home, Garden, Design February 5, 2021February 3, 2021

At Edith’s Table: Food and Dining in Wharton’s Life and Work

In this illustrated online talk, writer and food historian, Carl Raymond will present an overview of how food and dining are represented in Wharton’s major fiction and memoir.

Attendees will get a sense of how Wharton used food and dining to convey character and background in passages from some of her most memorable work. Raymond will also present examples from Wharton’s own life including food memories from her childhood as well as insight into how she designed her own dining rooms and her thoughts on entertaining. In addition, attendees will come away with a glimpse of how dining functioned in the overall Gilded Age society and how it defined social class.

Carl Raymond is a writer and lecturer on food and social history. He has spoken nationally as well as in Europe on various aspects of American and British food history and culture for organizations such as the Royal Oak Foundation, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, the English-Speaking Union as well as various museums and societies. He has written for the publications of the Royal Oak Foundation as well as the Culinary Historians of New York and was a contributing writer on SAVORING GOTHAM: A Food Lover’s Companion to New York City (Oxford University Press).

DATE/TIME: Thursday, February 11, 2021 / 4pm – 5pm

LOCATION: The Mount Online
Streamed live via Zoom

TICKETS: $20 General; $15 Mount Members
Available online here

MORE:
www.edithwharton.org
facebook.com/TheMountLenox
instagram.com/themountlenox