2020
Covid, of course
Moving on....
The big news...we re-opened this year!
First we built a Welcome Area...
The ground breaking ceremony
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and breaking ground
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Construction
Brian Turgeon surveying his work
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Framing the Restrooms
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Grading
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Then the necessities:
Bringing electricity in.
Designing and building a septic system
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Drilling a well
The Detention Pond
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Then moving things in:
Moving the Kiosk
Moving a large flowering Rhody
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Moving the Acrobats
Moving our large signature stone
Moving in Sculptures
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And finally done:
Kiosk open for business, with Nanci
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Restrooms
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The sign
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And everything comes together!
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...and then we were open...
In a covid year, people wanted to get outside, we were very busy!
Here are some pix:
First visitors
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Individuals keeping social distancing
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Small group as a pod
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Plants ready to sell
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The Tuxmobile donated to us by Katie and Doug Wheeler
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Helped by great publicity:
Erin and Sean from NH Chronicle did a segment on Bedrock Gardens
See the Chronicle piece here.
If you enjoyed that, take a video tour of the garden here. Also, a great article in NH Magazine , a writeup in the Boston Globe, and a mention in The Washington Post |
Filming
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12 Page article with front cover in New Hampshire Home
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...and we had a memorable Fourth Annual Fairy Hobbit House Festival to close out the season.
Lots of people came
Love this mother and her three fairies
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Betsy Williams, author of Are There Faeries at the Bottom of Your Garden? made herbal pixie dust for our visitors. She was very popular.
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Wentworth Greenhouses from Rollingsford, and an event sponsor, had a successful three days selling plants and accessories.
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Sugarmomma's Maple syrup ice cream was a favorite.
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And, of course, there were fairies, fairy houses and more.
Great art, provided again by painter Peggy Hepburn of Somersworth, NH mark our new entrance pathway
One of the most elaborate fairy houses we have seen
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First place prize won by Mary V...again!
The Gnome Home
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Kathleen at work with our new Square System.
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Our iconic wood nymph created by a very talented volunteer, Katherine Reynolds, who brought much design, graphis, fairy house, and more.
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But we couldn't have done it without our special volunteers...like Nanci Helton, who took a week off from work to organize it, and James Reynolds, who cleared land, ran the parking, and solved problems. (photo taken pre-covid)
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Events
We hosted some visitors and events this Covid Year:
Granite State Ambassadors, Many of whom are volunteers, are shown around by John Forti
February Farmer's Market (John Forti and Francine Kontos) in Feb (pre-covid)
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A couple of virtual classes at Dover High School were held here.
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And a couple of special event winners.
Lily, winner of the quilt raffle
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Heather, winner of the Magnolia tripedala
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Members of the Cabot Family Foundation. They have graciously funded us over three years.
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Projects
Hanging Great Balls of Fire
Three layer of scaffolding to hang the suspension wires
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Bob resting on his laurels
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A perfect spot for GBOF
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Hanging The Ring
It took a complicated system of 2 different pulley systems and 2 different cable systems to hang the ring.
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The ring is up on one of the trees, with help of the golf cart pulling on the rope.
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It anchors the end of a 900 ft axis through the Allée.
Other Projects
Bob repairing Petit Pond. See him and the Golden Orfe fish at the bottom?
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The wildlife pond was land sculpted and had rocks added.
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Made some art. This one called the 'Log Jam'
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We created a 80 foot long stumpery/fernery.
Ferns for the Fernery
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Our wonderful volunteers planting the ferns
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Notable
It was a notable year for John Forti, our Executive Director!
Firstly, he was granted the 2020 Award for Horticultural Excellence from the National Gardens Club. Read about it here.
Congratulations, John! Secondly, he completed his new book due out in May 2021: “The Heirloom Gardener - Traditional Plants and Skills for a Changing World” for Timber Press/Workman Publishing." Pre-order it here, or buy it at Bedrock this spring. |
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Also...
We are Garden number 12 in this great new garden book:
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We grew our Board. We added Sally Evans to our Board of Directors! See her profile here .
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Also...we published a calendar of Bedrock Garden photos. You, too, can have a little bit of this piece of heaven in your home...click here.
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More on the Bees
Maryellen McKeen has donated four colonies of bees, all their accoutrements, and countless hours. We now have four viable colonies. Thank you Maryellen!
We added bling...towers, glass tops,platforms. Maryellen's girls are part of a happening.
Well loved by all Maryellen's girls.
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Teaching about bees at the Fairy Hobbit House Festival
Final result? Our own honey.
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Food for Thought:
An estimated 121 Million people visited public gardens. A little less than all (NFL, NBA, NHL, & MLB) [134 million] professional sports combined. And their attendance is flat/declining, while garden visitors is going up!
We had 12,000 visitors in 2020.
We had 12,000 visitors in 2020.
Loving:
Plants
We had great fun this year with a distinctive milkweed variety.
You can see that the leaves look like milkweed,...
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...but the seed pod is different.This variety is called...errr... "Hairy Balls." [Gymnocarpus physocarpa]
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If you open it up, you see the typical milkflower tightly knit seeds with their undeveloped parachutes.
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Indeed, give it a few hours, and it unfolds into the typical milkweed floating seed.
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Grasses with bad hair days:
Schizachyrium scoparium, commonly known as little bluestem
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Sporobolus heterolepis, commonly known as prairie dropseed,
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One of our favorite annuals, the castor bean.
It grows 6-8 feet tall in one season.
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The Castor Bean (Ricinus communis) seed pod
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Just some nice photos of plants
Look at the white in this Arisaema
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Dalia [Dahlia Verrone's Obsidian] and Dragonfly
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Animals
A juvenile cormorant hung around the pond for 3-4 weeks, gorging himself on the fish in it.
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First we had six guineas...
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Now we have one.
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and rocks.
We create new environments with them....
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...hang them on walls...
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...pile them up...
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...or sometimes we just admire their colors.
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Volunteers
But mostly we love our volunteers!
The Friends of Bedrock Gardens, the nonprofit being groomed to inherit Bedrock Gardens, was active this year. In 2020, over 80 volunteers contributed more than 2000 hours!
Part of the Hands in Dirt crew . They are much touted, and much loved.
Deb Nugent and Melanie Hamilton manning the Gnome Depot at the FHH
Wendy Tauber with son and his friend taking a needed break.
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Marc Bono. our board president, with Marghi Bean, a volunteer.
Peggy Tucker, our over-the-top fairy godmother.
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Some board members and some volunteers on the last day we were open in 2020.
We love our volunteers!
At the end of the day...
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... we just hang up our hoses.
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