This field study is fully registered.

This behind-the-scenes look at great gardens explores Good Dogs Farm in Ashley Falls. A wise farmer who knew the value of the rich Housatonic alluvial plain built this simple farmhouse in 1811. Two hundred years later, Maria Nation is still reaping the benefits of that early settler’s appreciation of this sandy loam. Over the last two decades she has been designing, installing and maintaining the gardens with her own two hands. Because the gardens are hand-created rather than professionally designed, they reflect her own “personality, quirks, mistakes and changes of mind.” What was once an “exuberant” splash of perennial color has been replaced by glaucous greens and blues and the calming shapes of boxwood, yew, and shrubs. The  gardens have been featured in numerous magazines and various books, including Garden Wild, Private Edens, Great Gardens of the Berkshires, Growing the Northeast Garden, The Berkshires Farm Table Cookbook, among others. They have been open many times to Garden Conservancy Open Days, Mad Gardeners, the Lenox Garden Club, BBG Cocktails in Great Gardens and last year's Trade Secrets garden tour.   

Maria Nation is a screenwriter; a California native; a baker; a lover of dogs, horses, donkeys, cats (and, well everything mammalian); a happy cook who thinks three-hour lunches in the garden is rushing things; a  self-admitted “slightly crazed” gardener and the sometimes-nagging partner of Roberto Flores, her strong fellow dirtmeister.