Tim Lovett of Berkshire Property Agents offers a meticulously maintained move-in ready home nestled in private woodlands but minutes from downtown Great Barrington.
Renovations like this are done for many reasons, but the top three reasons are economic, practical considerations, and love. This renovation combines a bit of all three but “love” played no small role in the owner’s decision to do this work.
We developed a design that took a straightforward approach. From the driveway, we built a bluestone walkway about 25 feet long that connects the drop-off point to the front porch. I like to have wide landings outside front doors, so that more than one person can stand together and then enter the home.
The garden has thrown off its snow blanket and frost-hardy vegetables are growing despite occasional nighttime temperatures in the 20’s when the top layer of earth freezes solid.
Welcome to our new section, Home, Garden & Design, where we will be posting articles by prominent local architects, landscape designers and interior designers. Each article wilI follow the evolution of a project, from beginning to end, guaranteed to give you good ideas for your own home, garden, and design.
When we view the native plants that surround our gardens and yards as an extension of our cultivated areas, part of the living, pulsating community that shapes our sense of place, we more fully express ourselves as gardeners and stewards of the Earth.
When it is cold outdoors and chilled hands send us in, take the time to create or complete planting plans for the vegetable garden, perennial beds and borders.
"To grow healthy food requires a vibrant diversity of plants, animals and soil life. These form the immune system of your land that together help each other to sustain the farm. The soil we work with as part of a farm organism needs our help to be healthy.”
-- Lia Babitch, seed garden manager at Turtle Tree Seed
In planning the garden my emphasis is on staple crops that store without any preparation and fit into the existing storage “infrastructure.” Additional priorities include planting produce that is expensive to purchase in winter or not available organically grown.
In the first of her biweekly columns about growing and gardening in the Berkshires, Judy Isacoff writes: "Stars, the sunlit moon and planets circle the expanse of frozen, fertile ground during these long nights. There’s the sense of a night shift at work underground."
