Village Condominium Association

Indoor Gardens
by J. F. Weiler

Indoor gardens can help chase away the winter blahs, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's is Boston's best! It transports viewers into a magical land of exotic, colorful flowers. The floral arrangements change seasonally with plants being grown in the Museum greenhouses. In April twenty-foot bright orange nasturtium vines will cascade down from the third-floor balconies. Chrysanthemums are featured in October, and by November a holiday display of poinsettias, holly and flowering jade plants decorates the Courtyard.

The courtyard garden ornaments at the Gardner are an eclectic mixture of Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance arches, capitals and columns woven together through Mrs. Gardner's personal aesthetics and whims into a new-world Venetian palazzo. Mrs. Gardner herself mixed the combination of pink, yellow and white paints to achieve the effect of old sunlit Venetian walls. Mrs. Gardner's gardens were her first love and finest artistic expression.

"Gardens and the Urban Environment" will be this year's lecture series at the Museum. On February 19, Amale Andraos will present "Nature Revisited" as defined by global urbanization. On March 19, Chris Reed will discuss "The Gardner's New Gardens," a presentation of the designs for the Museum’s new exterior landscape. For lecture tickets and general information visit www.GardnerMuseum.org or phone 617-278-5156. The Gardner Museum is located at 280 The Fenway, Boston.

Italian Villas and their Gardens, a book by Edith Wharton, is being offered for sale by the Watertown Free Public Library. This 1907 volume combines Wharton's lucid descriptions with luscious color illustrations by Maxfield Parrish. The book will be offered for sale at www.LibraryBookSales.org or phone 617-972-6431.

Edith Wharton book	Flower bud	My red Ferrari amaryllis
Photos by J.F. Weiler

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Written for the Feb. 2011 Village Newsletter.