Mystic Seaport Presents First-Ever Garden Days
New Event Features Garden Tours, Hands-On Demonstrations, Children’s Activities and More

Mystic, Conn. ~ Horticulturalist, gardener, author and educational speaker Tovah Martin highlights the first-ever Garden Days at Mystic Seaport Friday through Sunday August 21 – 23.
Martin, who regularly appears on the PBS gardening series Cultivating Life, will present “Houseplants, Terrariums and You” Saturday, August 22 at 1 p.m. Martin has written several gardening books including Tasha Tudor’s Garden, View from a Sketchbook: Nature through the Eyes of Marjolein Bastin and The New Terrarium. She will be available for book signings after her presentation.
A Demonstration Tent on the Museum’s Village Green will host numerous activities throughout the weekend including fresh produce, herb and pesto demonstrations, a discussion of butterfly gardens, low maintenance naturalistic gardening lectures and more.
Additionally, visitors can tour the Museum’s historic and contemporary gardens, shop vendor booths, learn how to photograph gardens and flowers, create herb bundles and autumn wreaths and make their own seed packets in the Museum’s Print Shop.
The first 150 youth visitors each day will receive a complimentary sapling courtesy of Sprigs & Twigs Landscapes to take home and plant. Children can also take part in a garden scavenger hunt in the Children’s Museum and try their hand at various garden-themed arts and crafts in the Kids’ Activity Tent.
Other scheduled Master Gardeners will present the following lectures:
· Rose Hiskes – “Protecting Our Trees” – Friday, August 21 at 1 p.m. A senior scientist for the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, Hiskes specializes in Entomology and will discuss how insect problems and insect management can affect agriculture.
· Dawn Pettinelli – “Establishing Garden Beds” – Friday, August 21 at 3 p.m. Pettinelli is an assistant cooperative extension educator in the Department of Plant Science at the University of Connecticut. She manages the activities of the UConn Home and Garden Education Center and the Soil Nutrient Analysis Laboratory and specializes in horticulture, food safety, soil testing and pest control.
· Sheila Wertheimer – “Discovering Miss Florence Griswold’s Gardens” – Saturday, August 22, at 11 a.m. Wertheimer has been designing residential and historic gardens for more than 20 years with her firm Wertheimer & Associates. Her work has been instrumental in the historic renovations of Harkness Memorial State Park, the Florence Griswold Museum and the Monte Cristo Cottage.
· Brian Kent and Chad Frost – “Sustainability in Landscape Design” – Sunday, August 23 at 1 p.m. Principals of Kent & Frost, a landscape architecture firm in Mystic, CT, the landscape designers pride themselves on providing a “green design” for residences, urban streetscapes, town-wide master plans and parks.
Participating vendors and demonstrators for Garden Days include Bartlett Tree Service, Broken Arrow Nursery, Center for Vector Borne Disease at the University of Rhode Island, Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group, Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center, Drake Design Studio, KP Design, Lisa’s Garden Designs, New England Carnivorous Plant Society, Pan’s Acre Nursery, Seamen’s Inne, Sprigs & Twigs Landscapes LLC and Stephen Sisk Photography.
All activities are included in Museum admission. For more information, visit www.mysticseaport.org/gardendays.
Within the nine gardens at Mystic Seaport, visitors will find a diverse collection of gardens, trees and shrubs with hundreds of different varieties of plants that accentuate the beauty and historical context of the Mystic River, tall ships and historic village. Two recreated 19th-century gardens portray the social order, economy and cultural pursuits brought about by the Industrial Age. For more information, visit www.mysticseaport.org/gardens.