“We fell in love with the aspect of Church House, sunlit, surrounded by fields, with a view of the Berkshire hills. A great old sugar maple towered above the house, originally a Methodist church, giving it gravitas. The garden designer Nancy McCabe, hired by a previous owner twenty years ago, added a line of spruce to shield Rte 7 and planted groves of shadblow and crabapples to flower against the evergreens. She sited a swimming pool beyond some old apple trees and framed it with hydrangeas. We are adding more varieties to what was an abandoned bed on the east side. I kept a small cottage garden that she created in front of the house, and am having fun giving it new life. A young orchard and a patterned cutting garden now extend beyond the back of the house where we added a living room. Mowed paths in the meadows lead to lime-rock-strewn woodland and a ravine with a vernal pool. Both fields and woods are ongoing projects, making trails, clearing invasives, and nurturing natives. This will be our fourth year in the garden.”

–Page Dickey

View the Jones garden.

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