Highlights & Gardens of Massachusetts
Highlights & Gardens of Massachusetts8 nightsFrom £1215 per person
Price includes: Flights, accommodation and car hire
Day 1 - Boston, MA
Arrive in Boston for three nights. Famous for everything from the Red Sox and Paul Revere to Cheers and clam "chowdah", Boston is a popular destination for so many reasons. Part history lesson, part modern metropolis, the Hub offers attractions to suit every taste and interest. Hop on the Freedom Trail, a well-preserved pedestrian path that weaves in and out of historic neighbourhoods. Between landmarks, you can shop the fabulous stores and distinctive red-brick buildings of Beacon Hill.
Day 2 - Boston, MA
A great way to see Boston is to take a "hop on-hop off" Trolley Tour that will show you all the highlights of the city. One of the stops is the Boston Public Garden the first Public Garden in the USA established in 1837, and adjacent to famous Boston Common, created in 1634. This style of park was ushered in by Victorians who had new techniques readily available to collect, hybridize and propogate plants. They bedded-out the Garden in intricate floral patterns of blazing colour and exotic imported trees along with a lagoon, monuments and fountains. The famous Swan Boats have been in operation for over 100 years.
This afternoon you can visit the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and its Tenshin-En Japanese Garden, a Japanese rock garden names in honour of Okakura Tenshin, the former Asiatic curator of the Museum. Created in the kare sansui style, the garden was inspired by the Zen temple gardens of 15th-century Japan. Combining elements from Japan, New England and the Museum of Fine Arts, the garden creates a new interpretation of an ancient art form. Nearby is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Courtyard & Garden, designed as a fifteenth century Italian palazzo, to house a collection of European art. Within the palace is a courtyard garden that has the character of a small Italian garden with a mosaic design in the middle of the courtyard. Nasturtiums are hung from the balconies in remembrance of Mrs. Gardner's birthday (April 14, 1840) and there is a rotating seasonal display with other highlights including a display of hydrangeas, Martha Washington geraniums, Cape primrose and tree ferns in May; and a holiday-inspired installation of poinsettias, azaleas, cyclamen, winter berries and heather trees in December and January. Outside the palace is the Monks Garden, the South Garden and a formal rose garden.
Day 3 - Boston & Cambridge
Public Transport is readily available to Cambridge and Harvard, site of the famous university and lively Harvard Square. Nearby you will find the 72 acre Mt. Auburn Cemetery & Garden, founded by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1831.Inspired by Pere Le Chaise Cemetery in Paris, Mount Auburn is a cemetery with the character of an early nineteenth century English landscape garden and many famous Bostonians lie here, Charles Eliot who established, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the first landscape architecture education program in the world. Time also to visit the Longfellow House & Garden once headquarters for General George Washington during the Siege of Boston, July 1775 - April 1776 and home of Henry W. Longfellow, one of the world’s foremost 19th century poets. The house is clapperboard colonial and the National Park Service restored the garden to its colonial style, emphasising the formality of the original layout.
Day 4 - Boston – Salem (approx. 16 miles)
Travel to the town of Salem, noted for its 17th century witchcraft trials, where you can visit the Salem Witch Museum and the House of Seven Gables, inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel.
It’s just a few minutes drive from Salem to Beverly and the Long Hill Garden, a 114-acre hillside property with lovely views of the rural North Shore. The gardens are laid out in a series of separate garden “rooms” surrounding the handsome, Federal-style, brick house. Each “room” is distinct in its own way, accented by ornaments and statuary. Today, the gardens retain the “Garden for Living”–style with integrated outdoor rooms, mature plantings that blend into the surrounding woodlands, and a spirit of innovation in horticulture. There is a Chinese pagoda, a Venetian pavilion, a Little Garden, a flight of Fan Steps and the gardens are flanked on all sides by more than 100 acres of woodland as well as an apple orchard, meadow, children’s garden, and agricultural fields. Further up the coast is the artist colony of Rockport, and the charming fishing port of Gloucester with its famous Fishermen’s Memorial statue commemorating “... they that go down in ships.”
Day 5 - Salem – Berkshires (approx. 160 miles)
Drive this morning to the lovely Berkshires Hills of Western Massachusetts and, en-route, the possibility to visit the Garden in the Woods, in Framingham. New England’s premier wildflower garden, and named as one of Great Places to Visit in Massachusetts, it has more than 1,000 native plant species, with many rare and endangered native specimens throughout the gardens, as well as the unique New England Rare Plant Garden.
Day 6 - Berkshires
The serenity and remoteness of the Berkshires attracted artist and authors including Melville, Hawthorne and famous illustrator Norman Rockwell and a visit to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge is well worthwhile.
Visit the Berkshire Botanical Gardens, a botanical collection, laid out as a series of garden rooms in a woodland setting. Both functional and ornamental, they are among the oldest in the US and have been expanded over the years in breadth and variety through a series of bequests and major gifts. The collections emphasise plants that are indigenous to or thrive in the Berkshires; more than 3,000 species and varieties are represented.
One can Journey back in time to the Mission House & Garden in Stockbridge. This Colonial-era house and museum, a National Historic Landmark, tells the story of the Stockbridge Mohican Indians and missionary John Sergeant. From 1928 to 1933, noted landscape architect Fletcher Steele designed the Colonial Revival garden, which features a colonial-style dooryard garden of circular brick paths enclosed by a cypress fence. A kitchen garden divided by crushed stone walkways contains 100 herbs, perennials, and annuals that had culinary or medicinal value to early colonists. A replica of an old cobbler shop serves as the entrance to the property and the house showcases an outstanding collection of 18th-century American furniture and decorative arts. A grape arbor in the Well Courtyard behind the Mission House leads to a small Native American museum that tells the story of the Mohicans.
If time permits visit Naumkeag Garden in the summer estate of Joseph Choate, former ambassador to Britain, with its formal grounds, fountains and rose garden. The Moon Gate and Blue Steps are the garden's most famous feature; a flight of steps with arched blue recesses and a white Art Nouveau handrail ascending through paper-white birch trees.
Day 7 Berkshires – Sturbridge – Cape Cod (approx. 185 miles)
This morning travel to Sturbridge where you can visit Old Sturbridge Village an authentic re-creation of a rural New England community in the early 1800’s. The foremost gardening concern among rural New Englanders at the turn of the 19th century was the cultivation of useful vegetables, fruits, and herbs. Rapid changes and a spirit of reform in the next few decades inspired an interest in ornamental gardening. The vegetable and flower gardens at the Village exhibit plant types, gardening practices, and garden styles of the 1830s. These are based on extensive research by staff members using historical sources such as letters, diaries, reminiscences, seed and nursery catalogues, and garden advice books. The Bixby House kitchen garden displays vegetable, herb, and small fruit varieties commonly cultivated in New England in the early 19th century. At the Parsonage, the minister's kitchen garden follows an advice book and demonstrates a more scientific and experimental approach. The flower gardens show a variety of plants and garden styles and knowledgeable costumed staff, who care for the re-created gardens, answer visitors' questions. Later travel to Cape Cod, a fabulous summer resort with white sandy beaches and abundant attractions.
Day 8 - Cape Cod
Just outside Sandwich are the Heritage Museums & Gardens offering 100 spectacular acres of trees and shrubs, designed gardens, exquisite flowers and sweeping lawns. The gardens are a delight any time of year. Spring features showy Dexter Rhododendrons and flowering trees, while summer boasts brilliant annuals and dazzling daylilies. Autumn highlights blazing foliage and the fall-blooming Franklinia. Winter showcases beautiful heathers, bright berries and noble evergreens. Later perhaps a whale watch cruise and tour the Cape with a visit to historic Chatham or colourful, artistic Provincetown
Day 9 - Cape Cod – Boston Logan Airport (approx. 75 miles)
En-route visit Plymouth, location of the Mayflower, a replica of the original Pilgrims ship and Plimoth Plantation, a living museum depicting life in 1627. Time for lunch before driving to the airport and your flight home
