High Summer Gardens

August is beyond peak time in New England gardens but there is still a lot of color out there:  primarily from phlox, phlox and more phlox. I’ve been taking pictures on my local travels and those below are from eastern Massachusetts, coastal New Hampshire, and southern Maine. The first group were taken during a visit to Fuller Gardens in North Hampton, New Hampshire. The garden was designed by landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff (of Colonial Williamsburg fame) for the 50th governor of Massachusetts, Alvan Fuller,  and his wife Viola, who maintained a summer seaside home in North Hampton, which is only about ten miles from the Massachusetts border. The house is no longer there, but its adjacent gardens are, laid out in a series of  “rooms” in the Colonial Revival fashion. Everything is so immaculately maintained, especially Mrs. Fuller’s beloved roses, that it is a treat to visit here in August when nearly every other garden I see (including my own) is looking a bit tired and overgrown.

Up the road a piece, some gardens and flowers in Portsmouth, New Hampshire:  Prescott Park in the afternoon and early evening, a vertical garden on a utility box, and the terraced garden across from the Moffat–Ladd House (1763) on Market Street.

Some very diverse images of plants and landscapes in southern Maine:  a coastal garden in Kittery Point, a checkerboard courtyard, a border, and my father’s cabbage, all in York.

Back home in Massachusetts, the colonial garden at the Parson Capen House in Topsfield, with its raised beds and very practical herbs and flowers, and my own Salem garden, which I think is a bit behind due to its sheltered location:  the bee balm is still reigning, the phlox (I have only the white, mildew-resistant David variety) is just starting to bloom, and the ferns are starting to sag:  August is not their month.