Welcome

November 15, 2019

Welcome to our totally new website in which we celebrate 35 years of working side by side to create the garden and books you'll see on this website. The photos you’ll see of our garden here in southeastern Vermont show the results of working as self-taught garden designers. Because both of us grew up on farms (Gordon on an orchard in Connecticut, Mary on a diversified farm in the North Cotswold Hills of England) we have learned how to collaborate with nature. We hope you enjoy the results.

Journal

A record of announcements, thoughts, musings, design ideas and daily happenings around Hayward Gardens.

Hayward Gardens named to the Smithsonian’s Archive of American Gardens. Click logo above to see more.

Featured Posts

Featured

July 19, 2023

South Meadow Native Plants and Plantings

July 19, 2023

Working with The Vermont Land Trust and the Windham County Conservation District, Mary and I are working to restore our five acre meadow to a native habitat for bird and wildlife. This post outlines the specific steps we have recently taken in that effort.

July 19, 2023

June 25, 2023

Climate Change at Hayward Gardens

June 25, 2023

It appears to Mary and me that climate change is beginning to impact our garden in new ways.

June 25, 2023

March 17, 2022

Garden Rooms: Ideas and Inspiration- A Talk at the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro, Vermont

March 17, 2022

In this 1 hour illustrated talk at The Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro, Vermont, I share my ideas about how to design a garden room.

March 17, 2022

March 14, 2022

March In Our Winter Garden

March 14, 2022

I woke just before 6:00 AM on the morning of March 10. Looking out the window, I could make out through a thick haze 6” of fluffy snow had fallen overnight. Snow had gathered atop every single branch and twig on every woody plant in our 1 ½ acre garden.

March 14, 2022

January 20, 2022

Garden Rooms: Ideas and Inspiration- A Zoom Talk With The Chicago Botanic Garden

January 20, 2022

November 30, 2021

South Meadow Restoration

November 30, 2021

I’m going to shift for this coming winter from posts about our garden to pay attention to a five acre meadow we own, a meadow we are in the process of “restoring”,“rewilding”, “conserving”.

November 30, 2021

August 5, 2021

Jumper Worms

August 5, 2021

April 10, 2020

Deep Sources

April 10, 2020

We gardeners can all look back to those adults in our childhood who inspired us to garden: an uncle, a mother, grandmother or aunt, a neighbor. We can all look back to models who had ways of relating to the natural world that remain in us today. And memories of them, sometimes startling, clear memories stretching over decades, attest to the lasting power of people from our pasts who remain very much alive through and in our gardens today.

April 10, 2020

Barn Swallows

April 10, 2020

It wasn’t until one day in mid-April of 1984 that we learned all those eight or ten barn swallow nests clinging to rafters of our 150 year old barn would in fact be occupied. Because we had moved in to our sadly neglected 200 year old farmhouse the previous December, we had no way of knowing if those nests were simply artifacts from the past, or nests waiting for the return of their builders.

April 10, 2020

March 17, 2020

A Garden Gate with Resonance

March 17, 2020

“Ornament” is an inadequate word to describe a metal gate we installed in our garden last year. And it is extraordinary because of the rich associations the gate has with the life that my wife Mary and I have shared since 1976.

March 17, 2020