Garden tour dries after wet start

AMENIA — At the beginning of last Saturday’s Hidden Gardens Tour, sporadic showers threatened to mar the event.

But the weather must have snuck a peak at some of the town’s beautiful gardens and had a change of heart, because the rain ceased and by the end of the day the sun had actually come out, a fitting conclusion to the event’s 13th year.

The event is put on by The Garden Club of Amenia, which last year was incorporated as an official not-for-profit organization. Proceeds from the event support the beautification of Amenia, which for the past three years have included the purchase and distribution of a collective 49,000 daffodil bulbs.

“Last year over 100 people picked up bulbs,� Garden Club founding member Diana King said in her garden, Bird Song. “People have planted them along the roads in the past. After a few years we’ll probably be the daffodil capital of the county.�

There were 10 gardens on the tour this year, ranging  geographically from Alexis England’s and Scott Small’s, Small Garden, near the northern end of Perrys Corners Road to Wendy Goidell’s, Phantom’s Rock, on Bog Hollow Road in South Amenia, one of three new additions to this year’s tour.

“One of the really great things about gardening is that you can give 10 people 10 different plots of land and end up with 10 completely different gardens,� pointed out Maxine Paetro, another founding member of the town’s Garden Club.

So was the case with the gardens that Amenia had to offer this year. One could start with Paetro’s Broccoli Hall in Smithfield, a 25-year-old “work-in-progress� that gives such a natural impression that one would be inclined to think that even if it were wild land much of the garden’s flora would have just sprouted from the soil anyway.

Then head south, way south, to Phantom’s Rock, which was finished only days before the tour (credit to Chris Rawlings, Ana Hadjuk and Andy Durbridge) and included a natural swimming pool and water garden constructed from uncut pieces of native gneiss rock found in the nearby land. There was also a planted meadow with a mix of wildflowers and native grasses “designed to nourish the neighbor’s honeybees,� according to the tour’s program.

Many of the gardens seemed like an exhausting, never-ending amount of work to stay on top of, but as King pointed out that’s often exactly the point.

“If you don’t love the labor, forget gardening,� she said. “To me, even weeding a garden is meditative.�

Paetro’s garden has been featured in numerous gardening magazines, but the most satisfying compliments come from visitors.

“There was a bus tour from Australia,â€� Paetro remembered,  “and one of the guests said to her fellow tourist, not to me, ‘Why this must be the prettiest little garden in all of America.’ That might not be true, but I enjoyed that sentiment enormously.â€�

It would seem an impossible task to visit all 10 gardens in a single day, giving each garden the proper time and attention it deserves, but many visitors had never been on the tour before and were essentially driving blind, heading to the next garden without any idea of what they might encounter.

“It’s so lush,� Harriet Fried said as she was leaving Broccoli Hall, her first stop, before getting a few helpful recommendations to fill up the remainder of her afternoon. “All I kept thinking was ‘How does a person manage all this?’ A few pots is all I can handle!�

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