There’s a particular scent in the air evocative of childhood and candy treats: grapes are ripening on arbors all over town. Almost every garden in Bristol has at least one grape arbor and Blithewold is no exception. Our grape is an one-hundred (plus) year-old Concord, bred from native grapes and selected for early ripening and the sweetest flavor, growing from gorgeously gnarled trunks (I could only hope to look that cool and have a fern growing out of my knee when I’m 100) wrapped around the arbor next to the pumphouse. Despite its age, our vine is healthy, taking the vagaries of the weather on its chin.We have never (not in my time anyway) sprayed it to combat the kinds of fungus that seem to plague other gardens’ grape vines. It gets pruned in late winter and harvested now and has only been unproductive in rare years (last year for one). Most of the time Gail and I beg certain volunteers and staff members to take as many grapes as they’d need to make just enough jelly to share a couple of jars with us. (We’re further benefited by the fact that harvesting greatly reduces the number of funky past-ripe grapes that fall on all of the plants we keep in the shade under the arbor.) This year we were also able to share the bounty with the East Bay Food Pantry. As I picked them today – and sampled – I was struck as I am annually by just how intensely sweet the grapes are. And by just how much grape soda  – my memory of it anyway – tastes like actual grapes.

I also couldn’t help vaguely remembering, as I always do, the story of Ephraim Bull, the unlucky breeder Concord grapes, told in Paul Collin’s book Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn’t Change the World and wishing I could remember the details of how someone named Welch came to make berzillions on that grape while poor Bull died a pauper. I’ll have to go back and reread…

Do you grow any grapes in your garden? What kind? Do you make wine from them, like my neighbors do, or jelly?

A little more than a month ago in a post about potting bench perfection I mentioned that our potting bench was in a sorry state and that the windows above it were drafty heat-leakers. No longer true! Gail and I are thrilled to be cozy behind a bank of new storm windows and can’t get over the beauty of the shiny new stainless-steel bench topper that one of our favorite carpenters installed in about 2 seconds yesterday.

Winter is definitely the best time for dreaming about projects and for being able to follow through with minimal disruption to the day to day workings, or the visitors’ enjoyment of the property. It was easy for us to clear the bench because we’re more focused on putting our orders together right now than potting up.

And because there are fewer visitors on the property this time of year, we can get to some changes outside too. The North Garden wall repair was completed in record time and has provided us (the gardens and grounds staff) with an excellent opportunity to ask the gardens and grounds committee to consider a few of our ideas. We’d like to re-size some of the beds, improve the soil, add irrigation, and lay a path that will tie the floating fountain, which at one time had been the punctuation at the end of a bowling green, back to the garden. With spring clearly closer than it usually is this time of year, it looks like this next project might get rolling soon. We hope all of Blithewold’s members, visitors, and brides think it’s an improvement.

Are you using this time to make some improvements to home and garden too?

The North Garden wall restoration project had already begun but it was almost as if we couldn’t wait to get at the wall itself. Three members of Team Florabunda came in on a wet and wildly windy morning, were reluctant to break for tea, and stayed past lunch to take the climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris) off of the North Garden wall. I never thought we’d be able to do it in a day but as soon as we started to rip-tear, none of us could stop. (Never underestimate the enjoyment a gardener takes in destroying something – gardening may in fact be one of the only creative arts that allows for that impulse. Don’t we all kind of love to weed?)

Without the hydrangea, the wall looks a lot smaller, and a lot more precarious. It became very clear as we worked that the very hydrangea that must have contributed to the wall’s downfall was also helping to hold it up. The edge along the east side is severely bowed and another section by the steps had begun to separate – you can just see the light of day through it in the picture below (top right). (Click on pictures for larger view.)

But other things were revealed as well, such as the quartz rocks that young Augustine collected in her travels and asked the masons to insert (also visible in the stone steps picture above.) And it’s much easier now to see the supports for a bench under the star. Gail and I only learned of the bench’s existence when we visited the archives to look at old pictures a couple of weeks ago. When the North Garden was divided into parterres, the bench was in line with the bowling green and the low fountain at the edge of the Bosquet, and must have been removed when the garden was done over in borders.

We all hoped to find buried treasure as well and in a way we did. The wall itself is a marvel and it will be wonderful to see it restored. And in case you are shocked about the demise of the hydrangea – that filled the truck just about to its limits – Fred and Dan took cuttings earlier in the year. It lives and will be replanted.

Do you enjoy giving in to the destructive impulse too? Cathartic, isn’t it?

It isn’t easy to let go of an amazing season in the gardens but at some point in the fall we will have to. Just not quite yet! There’s more activity and color in the gardens than ever – I don’t think I’ve ever seen more monarch butterflies than I have this week and even the hummingbirds are sticking around (or stopping here for meals before continuing south.)

We have been soaking up the last of the season and taking it all in. Literally and figuratively. This week’s harvest for the East Bay Food Pantry may have been our next-to-last but we managed to tip the scales at a whopping 148 lbs (of cabbage mostly) bringing us so close to our 1000 pound goal for the season we can practically taste it. Yesterday we also picked our next-to-last buckets of flowers for arrangements and even as I write, Crystal Brinson, flower and garden designer extraordinaire, is entertaining and inspiring a full-house with a floral design demonstration in the dining room.

We will begin taking out the cutting bed in a couple of weeks – but only after picking from it one last time to honor our curator Margaret Whitehead, who is celebrating the release of her book Blithewold: Legacy of an American Family. Margaret and a team of volunteers (she herself began as a volunteer) spent years – decades – sifting through the entire collection of letters, bills, journals, etc and transcribed everything. Margaret then spent the past three years putting it all together in a way that offers us all a glimpse into the lives of the people that created this place. It’s been a labor of true love for Margaret and is a fascinating read for the rest of us. Proceeds from the sale of the book go into the Mary Philbrick Conservation Fund to support preservation projects in the mansion. (In addition to storing Blithewold’s archives in her head, Mary Philbrick was also a much beloved garden volunteer, and Dick’s wife.) Buy the book!

The forecast for the weekend is sunny and in the 70′s so there’s no reason not to get out here and take it all in one last time too. That said, this bountiful fall could go on for a while yet and it’s only the mansion that will be closed after this weekend (to be readied already for Christmas!) The gardens remain open year-round and visits beginning next week will offer a behind-the-scenes look at projects and how we prepare the gardens for winter.

Is your fall bountiful? Are you still busy taking it all in?

One of the issues that has come up in our Master Plan process is the need to identify and preserve Blithewold’s “character defining” views — because it would be a rare garden or piece of property that did not borrow at least some of its beauty from outside of itself. And the views within the property or into it from outside are every bit as important and in some cases – probably for most of us with small urban gardens, even more worth preserving.

The vistas with the most obvious significance to Blithewold visitors have to include the views from within the property (both broad and keyhole) of Narragansett Bay. The property’s placement at the edge of Rhode Island’s shoreline is part of what makes us so special. There’s a view of water at the very end of Love Lane that we glimpse driving in the main entrance; the sweeping view across the Great Lawn from the terrace and North Garden all the way to Poppasquash and beyond; and the view of Bristol harbor from the Rock Garden that’s as precious as the inside of a Fabergé egg.

There are also important views of the buildings, like the view of the porte-cochère from the top of the driveway, the mansion’s front door from Ferry Rd., and across the Enclosed Garden to the summerhouse. Add the glimpses we get of important landscape elements as we walk through the property and there are a dozen views altogether that can be called “character defining”. (Of course, if it were up to me I’d add a few more – like any view of or into the Rose Garden and Moongate in June, and through the bamboo to the Display Garden and greenhouse…) The scope of the Master Plan reaches into the next 10-15 years but I imagine that we and those who follow us in this work will endeavor to never plant or build anything that will block the view.

In my own Master Plan process at home (don’t we all need a Master Plan?) I have identified a few views worth preserving – the most important being the view of my back border from the window over the kitchen sink. But I have even more views that need screening, like the ugly view of the compost pile from where I sit at my desk. Have you identified views worth preserving – or blocking – in your own garden?

Do you have favorite views into or of Blithewold?