Sunday Drive – A Garden Tour, Visiting Historic Sargent House, Gloucester, MA and more…

Sally and I have been so busy this summer that we really haven’t taken/had time to appreciate the pleasures and opportunities that only summer can offer. Several weeks ago, we agreed we needed to make time to smell the roses. So… last Sunday we  went on a garden tour, visited the Sergeant House Museum in Gloucester and concluded the evening at the Rudder in Rocky Neck.

The tour offered access the several private homes’s gardens that one would normally never see. We chose the tour in Beverly because it was on the way to Gloucester and it touted 7 acres, much of which was restored to New England meadow. You arrived and parked in front of the main house, recently renovated/restored by the North Shore architectural firm, Carpenter & MacNeille, whose work we hold in high regard. Somewhat formal, but casual enough to not be intimidating. We immediately spotted several species plants we would love to have in our yard. (Uh-Oh…)

The tall columnar Arborvitae in particular caught our eye.

Idealic walkway…

As you turned the corner of the house you came upon a lovely informal patio overlooking a casual rambling shade garden.

LOVED the boat shape picnic table!!!

Found several partial sun/shade loving plants to dream about.

I think this is a variety of Milkweed.

As you walked past the informal flower garden they landscape transitioned to a classic New England meadow. Tucked in it’s midst was a vegetable garden.

And as we completed the tour we came across this tub. We both found ourselves thinking, Montana ski lodge…

By then it was 3 PM and we hurried to Gloucester to pay a visit to the Sargent House/Museum, “built in 1782 for Judith Sargent Stevens Murray (1751-1820), a philosopher, writer and an early advocate of women’s equality”.

the home’s exterior is classic Georgian/Federal Period Architecture.

For such a diminutive structure, it is a powerhouse of classical details. The foyer stair, with its complicated turnings reminds me of the stair found in the now restored Shirley Eustis House in Roxbury, MA.

Fabulous how the window lite brings daylight into the interior.

High Federal Style was carried through the front bedrooms.

Then it was on to dinner on Rocky Neck, home of one of America’s oldest art colonies.

You can not go to Rocky Neck without stopping at The Rudder for dinner…

And finally, sunset on Niles Beach overlooking Gloucester Harbor.

I wonder where we will go next Sunday?

Cheers,

John

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