Camden (Maine) Garden Tour 2014: Part 1
Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.
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The Furey farm and garden
Last year I attended the 2013 Camden House and Garden Tour in Camden, Maine, and really enjoyed it. The gardens were great, and the Camden-Rockport-Rockland area is beautiful. You can read about that trip here, here, and here. In fact, I liked it so much I decided to go back this year, spend two nights in the area, and take my husband Michael. This post is the first in a series on our trip.
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The front of the house was in blazing sun when we visited so it was hard to do justice to the gardens and window boxes.
The first garden that we visited was in Rockport in an area of fields and farms. The intensively planted cottage style garden surrounds a quintessential Maine farmhouse probably dating back a couple of hundred years. Although some of the gardens on the tour were clearly the creation of hired help, this award-winning garden has been lovingly tended by the owner and her family for five decades. The colors and combinations are beautiful, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
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Window box on the front of the house.
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Elaborate perennial beds surround the back of the house.
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The attention to detail is lovely.
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Carolyn
Nursery Happenings: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is closed for the summer and will reopen in early September. You can sign up to receive notification emails by sending your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net.
Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a local retail nursery in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, U.S., zone 7a. The only plants that we mail order are snowdrops and miniature hostas and only within the US.
If you are within visiting distance and would like to receive catalogues and information about customer events, please send your full name and phone number to carolynsshadegardens@verizon.net. Subscribing to my blog does not sign you up to receive this information.
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CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS 
July 25, 2014 at 11:19 am
If you don’t know it already, you should make a trip to Fernwood and meet Rick Sawyer. I think you would enjoy it
July 26, 2014 at 3:13 pm
Leslie, I have heard of Fernwood and have been meaning to stop by. Thanks for reminding me. Carolyn
July 25, 2014 at 3:27 pm
It does look like a nice tour. I remember your posts from last year. I do like how they do window boxes in Maine. They seem to take great care on their design, just lovely.
July 26, 2014 at 3:14 pm
Donna, It seems like all perennials and annuals are just more beautiful in Maine, maybe it’s the setting. Carolyn
July 26, 2014 at 12:28 am
Beautiful. I love bright flowers, weathered wood with lichens, and big granite blocks all together in a garden. It always says New England to me.
July 26, 2014 at 3:14 pm
Frank, That is a New England garden in a nutshell. Carolyn
July 26, 2014 at 3:04 am
Some lovely plant combinations there, I love garden visiting when on holiday.
July 26, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Pauline, You would think I would get enough of plants with my nursery, but I love to see other people’s gardens. Carolyn
July 27, 2014 at 10:13 pm
Oh how lovely! Not only gorgeous blooms, but also some incredible foliage combinations. That red house is so pretty with the colorful window boxes! My daughter is in Maine this summer, and she said it reminds her of Wisconsin in summertime.
July 28, 2014 at 9:52 am
Beth, I have never been to Wisconsin, but my husband who is from St. Louis and spent some summers in WI said they are similar, both beautiful. Maine does have the ocean though….Carolyn
July 29, 2014 at 4:59 pm
I love, love the window boxes. It is great to see a garden so lovingly cared for by the same family over such a span of time.
July 30, 2014 at 8:39 am
Deb, Yes, I much prefer a garden where the owner has put heart and soul into it to the best designed garden. Carolyn
July 30, 2014 at 5:52 pm
Carolyn I adored the house as soon as I saw it…the red farmhouse is perfect with those perennial beds!
July 30, 2014 at 7:30 pm
Quintessential New England!