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The Last Open Day of the Season

Ah the joys of snooping around other peoples' gardens, luxuriating in their seeming miles of brilliantly conceived, meticulously maintained, well-fed, deeply-mulched, weed-free planting beds, without personally having suffered a single twinge of sciatica or, indeed, so much as a broken nail.  Devotees of the Garden Conservancy Open Days Tours,

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Live & Learn: The Well-Appointed House, Circa 2008

Ever had that nagging feeling when talking to one of those guys who charge a lot of dough to cure what ails your house that you are slogging through a marsh?  (This sensation can be especially pronounced when a hyper-verbal Know-Nothing is holding up both ends of a conversation with

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A Cinderella House Makes Its Debut for Charity

Matthew Patrick Smyth, an A-list New York decorator with a weekend house in Sharon, is used to working for demanding clients who expect things done yesterday. So he was not surprised when Scott and Roxanne Bok approached him in June about decorating a restored 19th century farmhouse in Salisbury, CT,

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Gardening: Hollister House Festival & Seminar

Hollister House, in Washington, CT, is the featured site of a Garden Conservancy-sponsored Study Weekend that kicks off with a cocktail reception and tour of the extraordinary gardens that were begun there in 1979 by George Schoellkopf and Ron Johnson.  Since then, under Schoellkopf’s guidance (and, since 1993, with

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Giving Soul to A Spec House in Austerlitz

A brand new house is a blessing and a burden, a tabula rasa that  comes without the history, quirks and charm that are the hallmarks of memorable country houses.  Over the past seven years, James Oates and William Li have transformed a modest, spanking-new timber-peg, three-bedroom house on an unpaved

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Amy Goldman, Champion of the Real Tomato

“We're lucky to be living in such interesting tomato times," Rhinebeck resident Amy Goldman writes in her latest book, The Heirloom Tomato From Garden To Table (Bloomsbury USA, $35).  Twenty years ago cheap, perfectly shaped, unblemished, flavorless, dull red orbs were considered almost alright. Today, thanks to

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Pringle & Zimring is Now Open 24/7

One of our mantras is "Shop Local," but sometimes it's inconvenient  or impossible.  Betsy Zimring of Pine Plains, who runs an interiors-and-gift-shop in Millerton, understands, so she has launched an online boutique, PringleandZimring.com, so her faithful customers can patronize her store wherever they are and

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Eden Reconsidered

Duncan Brine’s first garden was in Brooklyn, in a dumpy plot behind his new girlfriend, now wife, Julia’s apartment.  “I made a garden so I could film it,” says the Princeton theatre major turned filmmaker turned landscape designer.  “It blew my mind.” Brine’s gardens have been blowing

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Berkshire Botanical Event: Gardening As Blood Sport

Don't let the theme of the 39th-annual flower show fool you: The Nurturing Garden: Birds, Bees, Butterflies and Best Friends sounds gentle, but the competition promises to be fierce.  Which brings to light a seldom mentioned fact: gardeners are as competitive as athletes.  This weekend they get to

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Mr. Siskin Blogs His Dream House

For anyone now in the process of building a house from the ground up, or anyone who dreams of one day building such a house, or even anyone who thinks that anyone who builds a house is insane, you'll find justification for your position on Paul Siskin'

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Tag sale: Brush up your Basic French

In honor of Bastille Day (July 14), and because she just rented her house for an entire year, Carol Neiley, owner of Basic French, is having a tag sale at her Red Hook shop this weekend (Friday-Monday).  Most of the stuff in the sale comes from her much-published (Victoria, Country

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Excursions: Tours de Force

This Saturday, two tours, one of The Hidden Gardens of Spencertown, the other of Litchfield houses, vie for our attention. Both will kick off with special patrons cocktail parties on Friday night. Litchfield Open House Tour The 61st Annual Litchfield Open House Tour, to benefit the Connecticut Junior Republic, features

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