AN 

 ISLAND 

 GARDEN 



Restored 



Virginia Chisholm 



Drawing Bob Parker 



perhaps one of the smallest and loveliest of New 

 England gardens was begun over a hundred years 

 ago by Celia Laighton Thaxter (1835-1894) on Ap- 

 pledore Island, one of the group of nine islands six 

 miles off the Maine and New Hampshire coast that 

 make up the Isles of Shoals. 



Celia Laighton grew up on Appledore where her 

 father, Thomas Laighton, built Appledore House, 

 the first of the huge resort hotels that would line 

 the east coast. When she was 16, she was married 

 to Levi Thaxter, the son of a Boston banker. They 

 lived outside Boston. The marriage was not suc- 

 cessful and ended when Levi moved south for 

 health reasons, taking with him their two younger 

 sons. Celia returned to Appledore with Karl, their 

 eldest son, to live with her ailing mother in her 

 mother's cottage Eventually she inherited this 

 cottage. 



She was already a well-known poet, but the re- 

 turn to Appledore marked the beginning of the 

 most productive time of her life. A number of dis- 

 tinguished literary figures visited her during the 

 summers and her cottage and its garden became 

 well-known. 



In the last years of her life, encouraged by Sarah 

 Orne Jewett, Celia wrote An Island Garden, a charm- 

 ing book illustrated by Childe Hassam. To those 

 who wish to restore or recreate a garden of this pe- 



riod, this book is a treasure. 



The book takes you through a gardening year in 

 the small (15x50) garden surrounded by a gray 

 wooden fence to protect it from the wind A nar- 

 row continuous bed ran along the inside of the 

 fence and nine small raised beds made up the 

 center section. The book includes a diagram and 

 planting scheme, but after reading the book, you 

 realize she didn't always stick to the same plan. 

 She liked to start her own seeds, so the garden is 

 mostly annuals. She planted her seeds early in 

 flats kept in south-facing windows. Difficult variet- 

 ies were started in egg shells. 



There are pages of descriptions of the flowers 

 she grew as well as of island wildflowers. Most of 

 the flowers are listed only by their common 

 names — "candytuft, cleome, coreopsis, cosmos...." 

 Shirley poppies were her favorites and she planted 

 them in succession so they could be enjoyed all 

 summer. 



She had just a few perennials: a red peony, 

 white phlox, a few roses, (rugosa, polyantha, Damask 

 laquemont), day lilies, delphinium. 



A variety of vines — Japanese hops, wisteria, nas- 

 turtium, clematis, honeysuckle, akebia, morning 

 glory — were trained to climb up and over the porch 

 in order to give badly needed shade. 



The same Japanese hops that were used to make 

 beer for the hotel still twine over the back fence of 

 the garden 



Celia rose at four to work in her garden This 

 must have been the only time she could be by 

 herself and enjoy the early morning and the flowers 

 she loved so much. 



She died in 1894, soon after Ah Island Garden was 

 published, and was buried on Appledore. The 

 Appledore House burned in 1914; Celia's cottage 

 was destroyed in the blaze. 



Mppledore remained deserted until the 1970s, 

 when the Shoals Marine Laboratory, a summer 

 school of marine biology originally run jointly by 

 Cornell University and the University of New Hamp- 

 shire, was begun by Dr. John Kingsbury. Kingsbury 

 reestablished Thaxter's garden on its original site in 

 front of the foundation of her cottage. Since his re- 

 tirement, Virginia Chisholm, with the help of the 

 Rye Garden Club, maintains the garden. The flow- 

 ers are grown in the Thompson School greenhouses 

 at the University of New Hampshire and are 

 brought to the island to be planted at the end of 

 May. 



At first it was difficult to find the seeds of some 

 of the old-fashioned flowers that had not been 

 dwarfed, doubled, or so developed that they had 

 lost their scent. Now, with the great interest in re- 

 storing old gardens, old seed varieties are reap- 

 pearing — although we still cannot find 'tall' single 

 dahlias and some of Thaxter's roses. 

 The garden is planted according to Thaxter's plan, 



The Plantsman 

 30 



