Welcome to Summer 2025:  A slow, dry, cool start to hopefully a more moist and sunny summer.

The end of May revealed the launch and distribution of our new company monograph:  The Art of Fine Gardening.

A decades-long goal has been born and we couldn’t be happier!  With Head Gardener and expert horticulturist, Russ Buvala by my side, we broached the goal of writing a garden book with real content and not with just beautiful images (which there are many!).

Planning for the late June launch party at the Gardens of 900 is in the works, hoping to feature the old rose collection in the Orchard and Delphinium since our cool spring has delayed these beauties so far.  Looking forward to lots of flowers for lots of folks at the event.

An odd winter of variable temperatures and moisture levels was difficult on some of our even mature woody plantings in many of our gardens.  Any plant that had some pre-existing condition like late fall transplanting shock, lack of root establishment, or previous frost cracks in the bark virtually killed some of our Hibiscus, Salix, Populus, and Magnolia around the North Shore.  Every year is so different from the last but this one was an anomaly.  We hope the changing climate doesn’t create more of these challenges but it seems inevitable it will.  How much stress can a plant handle that can’t move out of the way of climate change?  We are continuing our inclusion of many native plant species and varieties in our gardening practices as well as not “stretching” the planting time windows for proper establishment; all to try to mediate the damaging unknowns rampantly revealing themselves of late.

For every beautiful moment we have seen this verdant spring in our gardens, we look to the summer spectacle of blooms in high summer, and hopefully this year with less mealy bugs, Japanese beetles, downy scale…always the hopeful gardeners!

Be healthy, Be happy, and hope for more Bees in our gardens.

Sincerely,

Craig Bergmann and Company