Here at my Bedford, New York farm this morning, I am welcoming a group of more than 30 guests to view my late spring gardens.
With so much to do, everyone pitched in yesterday to get everything ready for the first tour of the season. Among the many tasks on our list - polish the silver, wash the glasses, weed the garden beds, edge the carriage roads, pick flowers, clean the fountains, and tend to the many outdoor potted plants. Fortunately, Mother Nature cooperated - it was a beautiful day and the farm looks gorgeous.
Here are some photos, enjoy.
After more than two years, I am finally able to open my farm for a select number of private walking tours to view the gardens. Most of them are conducted in late spring and early summer. It takes a lot of work to get the farm ready for these events – there are so many details to cover. Look closely and one can see Phurba weed whacking the newly mowed allée between my horse paddocks.
All the garden beds and tree pits are weeded and mulched. This Japanese maple is planted next to what I call my Stewartia Garden outside my Tenant House – aptly named because I have several Stewartia trees in this large bed. And, do you know why I love Stewartia trees? My last name is “Stewart” after all.
All the lawns are mowed and raked. This is my party lawn soccer field. My grandson, Truman, loves to play soccer here when he visits. Located between my long pergola and my pool, it is a beautiful, flat, and expansive space for lots of summertime games.
Up on my terrace parterre, Phurba cleans out the fountains.
This is one of two hand-casted antique fountains I purchased many year ago and finally installed in 2018. They look so nice on this terrace and all the visiting birds love to bathe in them.
Here, Pete uses a hoe to carefully hand edge the carriage road and create straight lines.
Look how nice the carriage road is after a little edging.
After Pete edged, Fernando follows behind to rake the debris.
Meanwhile, inside my Winter House, Carlos “dos” is busy at the sink cleaning and polishing the silver.
Look how these trays shine once they are done.
Linen napkins are pulled, ironed, and placed nicely on silver trays so they are ready to distribute.
Glasses are washed, wiped dry, and also placed on a tray – any chores that can be completed ahead of time are done the day before, so there is as little rushing around as possible the day of the event.
Potted plants are brought out of the greenhouse and displayed on my plant stand in the kitchen courtyard. Arranging potted plants is a great and inexpensive way to decorate both indoors and out.
More plants are placed on this plant stand – everything is also watered ahead, so pots are not dripping when guests arrive.
My new lead peacock gifted to me by my friend, antiques expert Vincent Manzo, is positioned and ready to greet visitors.
Enma cuts buckets of fresh roses for flower arrangements.
I adore roses and have grown them for more than 25-years. Right now, my roses are blooming all over the farm – all with their colorful petal formations and beautiful fragrances.
And look at these beautiful rose blooms. It is one of my favorite climbing varieties – Rosa ‘Veilchenblau’ – a mauve hybrid multiflora rose cultivar and the best known violet rambler. Other names are ‘Bleu-Violet’, ‘Blue Rambler’, ‘Blue Rosalie’ and ‘Violet Blue’. The cultivar was bred by Hermann Kiese in Germany in 1909. These Veilchenblau roses are stunning on my long and winding pergola.
My orchard surrounding the pool has more than 200 fruit trees. All the square tree pits are also weeded and the lawns mowed. Earlier this season, we expanded these tree pits to keep the mowers at a safe distance, so branches are not disturbed.
My new yew table in the pavilion outside my pool is wiped down and the chairs are all dusted clean.
And here’s Fernando doing what we call “dragging” the roads. We created this special device to rake the gravel, so it is even and picks up any debris along the way. This is done every couple of weeks to keep the roads looking neat and tidy. The bag on the rakes is used to keep them weighted and touching the surface.
It is made from four soft garden rakes attached to a wooden frame. It is crucial to maintain gravel roads, so water can flow properly during storms.
Fernando drives the four miles of carriage road around the property several times at the end of the day.
Look at the carriage road after it is raked. This section is right in front of my Winter House. When maintaining a road it is important to ensure it has a crowned driving surface and a shoulder area that slopes directly away from the edge for water drainage. Everything is looking ready for the morning tour.
There goes Fernando again. I will be sure to share photos from the garden tour in my next blog. Stay tuned.
Whenever I go to Skylands, my home in Seal Harbor, Maine, the days are always filled with lots of great activities - shopping and touring local gardens and nurseries are often on my list. And of course, spending time with good friends while sharing delicious meals.
Here are a few more photos from my weekend in Maine. My friend Chef Pierre Schaedelin from PS Tailored Events came up for the holiday to prepare many of our favorite dishes. You can also see more great photos on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48.
Enjoy.
Did you see this photo on @MarthaStewart48? My houseguest and good friend, Douglas Friedman, gifted all of us with these great totes from Pacific Tote Company. They’re so durable and great for carrying all our stuff. (Photo taken by Douglas Friedman)
When we arrived at Skylands we enjoyed some fresh donuts from one of Kevin Sharkey’s favorite establishments –The Colonel’s Restaurant and Bakery in Northeast Harbor, Maine.
For lunch that day, we enjoyed baguettes topped with prosciutto di Palma and served with olives and mozzarella.
Dinner on that first night was soft shell crabs, radicchio and endive salad, and homemade potato chips. Chef Pierre prepared the most delicious lunches and dinners.
Our dessert was strawberry shortcake on homemade biscuits with a dollop of creme fraiche.
Early Saturday morning, we started with a traditional bacon and egg breakfast with a handful of those delicious chips on the side. And of course – don’t forget the cappuccino!
Dinner included this fresh Caesar salad with homemade croutons.
We then enjoyed steamed artichokes which I brought with me from New York.
Our main course was steak – enough for everyone to have seconds if desired.
Here’s my plate. Our grilled steaks were served with carrots from Triple Chick Farm and a helping of polenta – a northern Italian dish made of coarsely ground corn. Freshly cooked, polenta is soft and creamy, like porridge.
Our dessert was grilled peaches served with homemade vanilla ice cream and brown butter shortbread cookies.
The next day we started with fresh strawberries and orange juice, squeezed by Cheryl DuLong.
And then, biscuits with caviar and eggs. These plates were originally owned by Mrs. Edsel Ford and were left in the home when I moved here. The collection is still intact and well used.
Sunday’s dinner was lobster and a large platter of delicious vegetables – carrots, peas, potatoes, and onions. We devoured everything.
We finished with a scrumptious rhubarb pie using rhubarb grown right here at Skylands – it was picked just hours earlier.
Chef Pierre always makes this at least once during our stay – it’s another of Kevin’s favorites. It’s poached eggs with tomatoes and cheese garnished with herbs.
Memorial Day weekend wouldn’t be complete without some hot dogs. We enjoyed these on Monday with all the traditional fixings.
We also had a beet and radicchio salad.
Along with a pea salad served with lobster, tomatoes, and relish.
Also on the table – grilled steak with roasted red peppers.
And potato and herbs salad – a perfect lunch to hold us through the last day of our stay.
In all, we had such an enjoyable time at Skylands. I can’t wait to return this summer. And please check out more of my photos on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48.
My large “iced terrace” at Skylands, my home overlooking Seal Harbor, is brimming with beautiful, green plant life once again.
Every year, I like to spend the Memorial Day weekend up in Maine planting all the large outdoor urns, pots, and planters. It is quite an undertaking, but it's become a fun tradition especially with the group that accompanies me. Many of the tropical and exotic specimens are stored in a hoop house at my Bedford, New York farm during winter, and then carefully loaded onto a trailer and delivered to Skylands for the summer months. As soon as I arrive there, I design the layout of where things will go, and we all get to work.
Enjoy these photos.
This trip to Maine is one that I look forward to every spring. Here I am on my faux bois bench with the dense fog over Seal Harbor behind me.
Out front on the driveway are some of the plants taken out of the trailer after being transported from my greenhouses in Bedford. I decide where each plant will go before they are moved – staying organized saves lots of time and energy.
Here are some of the smaller specimens we use as under plantings in the big pots. Everything is put out first, so we know exactly what we have to work with.
We always have a varied selection of plant material for all of the urns. Some of these plants were grown in my greenhouse here in Maine. Propagating this way saves a lot of cost.
These are called Birds of Paradise, Strelitzia reginae – a species of evergreen tropical herbaceous plant native to South Africa. Looking closely one can see the split leaves that are believed to be purposeful leaf tearing or lobing of leaves to reduce drag in the wind. They have evolved to create splits along their lateral leaf seams to allow the wind to pass by and not get snapped in half.
Here are Peter Grub and Moises Fuentes moistening the soil in the wheelbarrow. Everyone takes turns doing everything – from moving and preparing the plants to moistening the potting mix, to filling the pots, to planting.
One by one everything gets nicely planted in their designated urn. This is one of two giant Soderholtz pots – Eric Ellis Soderholtz was a pioneer in American garden pottery at the turn of the last century, turning concrete into these gorgeous vessels. I planted it with one of the Birds of Paradise.
Here’s Wendy Norling, one of my gardeners at Skylands. She planted the stone trough I bought at Trade Secrets several years ago. It has worked perfectly here at Skylands, and looks beautiful planted up with succulents.
Behind this planted urn are the lush green kiwi vines growing on my home. Kiwi vines can tolerate a lot of different light conditions, but more exposure to sun brings out better colors in the leaves, some of which can be variegated.
More kiwi vines grow on above the Western Terrace – one of my favorite summer meal spots. The faux bois pots are planted with agaves that were also transported to Skylands from my Bedford farm. Caring for agaves is easy when planted in the right location. Agaves need full sun – my large terrace here at Skylands is the perfect place.
Here is one side of the terrace after a hard day’s work. It is looking excellent – I can’t wait to see it all filled out – bold and lush later in the season.
Skylands gardener, Mike Harding, cleans up after our long afternoon of planting. This day was cloudy with lots of fog, but still very nice conditions for a successful gardening day.
Early the next morning, we all went to Asticou Azalea Garden in Northeast Harbor, Maine. Asticou Azalea Garden was created in 1956 by lifelong Maine resident, Charles Kenneth Savage, who was inspired by his love of native plants and his study of Japanese garden design. The Garden and its pond are open to the public from May to October each year.
Quaint stone steps allow visitors to cross the stream.
This “sand garden” built along the eastern edge of the stream, uses rocks and raked sand to suggest islands surrounded by flowing water. The sandy area is offered to visitors as places for quiet contemplation. Gardens of raked sand and stone are referred to as karesansui, which means dry landscape gardens in Japanese.
Another favorite stop whenever I go to Maine is Triple Chick Farm, a certified organic farm dedicated to producing healthy, organic food. Here I am with Kevin Sharkey, Hannah Milman, and Douglas Friedman – three “regulars” that join me at Skylands every spring.
Back at the house, Kevin always creates the most gorgeous flower arrangements. Here he is with Douglas and all the lilacs cut and ready for Kevin to arrange – the fragrance of all these blooms is intoxicating.
Did you see this on my Instagram page @MarthaStewart48? It is my tree peony on my terrace. I counted 61 blooms. It is so beautiful.
Here’s one of the lilac arrangements completed by Kevin in my Living Room. The lilac, Syringa vulgaris, is a species of flowering plant in the olive family Oleaceae. Syringa is a genus of up to 30-cultivated species with more than one-thousand varieties.
Another one sits on the faux bois table in my Living Hall. Lilacs come in seven colors: pink, violet, blue, lilac, red, purple, and white. The purple lilacs have the strongest scent compared to other colors.
And these lilacs are in my large Dining Room. When cutting lilacs, cut them right at their peak, when color and scent are strongest, and place them in a vase as soon as possible. Every arrangement is stunning. Thanks, Kevin.
The nights were chilly up in Maine. We had a fire going every evening in the Living Hall fireplace. In my next blog, I’ll share photos from all the great foods we ate during this fun trip to Maine. Stay tuned.
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