Explore three private gardens in Little Compton, open to the public for one day only to benefit The Garden Conservancy. No reservations required; rain or shine. Visitors may begin the tour at the Sakonnet garden, 510 West Main Road/Route 77, Little Compton, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., where directions are available to each additional property.
Sakonnet is an exotic cottage garden, divided into a series of outdoor rooms. Each space reflects ongoing experiments with lighting, space, color mixing, and growing rarely used plants, many semi-hardy to coastal Rhode Island. The Atwater Garden displays the unique horticultural skills and knowledge of its owners, a seasoned vegetable gardener and Garden Club of America judge. Features include carefully pruned trees and shrubs, two rock gardens, rare plants not yet on the market, and a collection of rhododendrons, azaleas, hollies, hostas, dwarf conifers, grasses, and Japanese maples. At Gioia Browne & Jim Marsh's Garden, towering elms and stone walls frame a seventeenth-century farmhouse on three acres, and planted with more than 150 trees and shrubs. Additional highlights include a woodland garden, a summer house overlooking a rock garden, a seventy-five-foot perennial border in shades of pink, purple, and blue, a shrub walk, and a white garden. See website for complete garden descriptions.
