Summer is here, and this issue of Nest — Seven Days’ quarterly magazine on homes, design and real estate — soaks it all up. Richard Alther invites us into his LAKESIDE HOME in Ferrisburgh, notable for its layered history and expansive vistas of water and sky. Even without lake views, Vermonters like to expand their living spaces outside this time of year; to that end, we tour four PERSONALIZED PORCHES across the state. Warren architect Dave Sellers calls the porch “a handshake with the natural world” — a sentiment that would appeal to GARDEN CONSULTANT MAGGIE HERSKOVITS, who nurtures open-minded approaches to urban plants, even those some people think of as weeds. Speaking of cultivating change, a major federal lawsuit will affect REAL ESTATE COMMISSIONS — we explore what that could mean for local buyers, sellers and agents. If the market makes your blood pressure rise, head to the spectacularly designed SPARKLE BARN AND BLOOM ROOM to stop and smell the flowers. Ahhhh
Out of Commission 6
Settlement of a federal lawsuit will change how real estate agents are paid — and may reduce their earnings
BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN
On a Curve 8
Richard Alther’s lakeside home is a memorial to his own history — and Vermont’s BY AMY
LILLY
Porch Song ............................... 13
How Vermonters take it outside in the summertime BY
KEN PICARD
True Colors .............................. 20
An immersive gift shop and new boutique lodging bring vibrant design to Wallingford BY ALISON
NOVAK
Garden, Interrupted 24
Author and gardening consultant Maggie Herskovits celebrates the resilience of urban plant life BY
RACHEL MULLIS
Billy Bratcher on the front porch of his home in Burlington’s
Out of Commission
Settlement of a federal lawsuit will change how real estate agents are paid — and may reduce their earnings
BY ANNE WALLACE ALLEN • anne@sevendaysvt.com
Before she put her Westford home on the market, Vicky Phillips did some math. With the four-bedroom home priced at $808,000, Phillips estimated it would cost her about $48,000 in commissions for a real estate agent to handle the sale.
Phillips decided to keep that money and sell the home herself. In May, she posted it on Picket Fence Preview, a website featuring homes that are for sale by the owner. She also paid a real estate agent $499 to o er the house on the multiple listing service, a
system that shows all the properties for sale through brokers.
“It isn’t complicated,” said Phillips, who owns a business and noted that she has signed much more detailed contracts than the one she’ll use in selling her home.
She’s shown her home five times, a process that usually takes her about two hours, including tidying up. If she contracted with a real estate agent to handle the sale, that person would expect the standard 2 or 3 percent commission, as much as $24,000. If a buyer’s agent were involved, as is often the case, that person would take another 2 or 3 percent of the sale price.
“Real estate agents are great, but what are you paying for?” Phillips asked.
Questions like Phillips’ have roiled the real estate profession for years, and recently a rebellion of home sellers succeeded. In March, the National Association of Realtors agreed to pay $418 million in damages to settle a 2019 federal lawsuit that accused the organization of violating antitrust laws by adopting rules that created an industry-wide standard commission.
The settlement specifies that the NAR must drop rules that require the agent for the home seller to o er payment to the agent for the buyer. Those rules have
resulted in the standard 5 to 6 percent commission being incorporated into the price of most homes for sale. Under the settlement, it will be easier for buyers and sellers to negotiate commissions with their real estate agents.
The settlement made national headlines, with some analysts predicting that the price of buying a home would drop significantly as a result of the decline in commissions.
Smaller commissions would be good news for Vermont home sellers, but local experts say the soaring cost of buying a house is mainly the result of the spike in home values. The median price of a house sold in Chittenden County climbed by more than $100,00 between 2020 and last year, to $460,500. With the typical commission of 5 or 6 percent, someone selling that home would pay the agents involved as much as $27,000.
Many real estate agents insist the national settlement won’t change anything in Vermont. Local agents have always been up front with homebuyers and sellers about how much commissions would cost — and have always been open to negotiation, said Kathy Sweeten, CEO of the Vermont Association of Realtors.
Vicky Phillips is selling her Westford home without a Realtor.
“It’s not going to have a huge effect, because we already do this,” Sweeten said in an interview. That’s the position many of Vermont’s real estate agencies are taking, too.
“We’ve been doing business this way for many years now with our agency disclosures,” Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty CEO Laurie Mecier-Brochu said.
But home industry analysts say the settlement will likely free up consumers to bargain with agents for their services. The Consumer Federation of America, an advocate for nonprofit consumer groups, said that while negotiating has always been an option in theory, contracts are usually written by lawyers for local real estate associations. Under the existing system, many homebuyers are unaware they’re paying a commission of 2 or 3 percent to their agent, because it’s incorporated into the home seller’s fees and therefore into the price of the home.
Starting next month, buyers who hire an agent to show them homes will be asked to sign a contract spelling out what they will pay the agent if there is a sale, so the cost will not be hidden in the sale price of the home. The advocacy group said the settlement will create more freedom and transparency for agents and consumers.
Change won’t happen overnight.
“The residential real estate marketplace will take some time, perhaps several years, to fully process the implications of this settlement,” the Consumer Federation said in a statement after the NAR settlement was announced.
Not all agents are paid by commission. Some charge a flat fee — $3,500 is common — instead of a commission, using that transparency as a selling point. And there have always been homeowners such as Phillips who avoid commissions altogether by tackling home sales on their own.
Changes in technology are making that easier. Nowadays, websites such as Zillow and Redfin display the homes that are listed on the MLS, making them available online to anyone who knows how to look for them. When she was shopping for a house two decades ago, Phillips noted, the real estate agent would print off MLS listings and mail them to her, a cumbersome process that gave the agent control over which properties Phillips could consider.
Online listing services also help would-be home sellers see what similar properties are going for — and provide valuable information to buyers, such as how much the home sold for in the past.
“Before, you couldn’t really go on Zillow and find comparables and past
histories and what the taxes were” for houses on the MLS, Phillips added.
Demand for homes is high in Vermont, making it a good time for sellers to try their hand at going it alone.
Before she put her Montpelier modular home on the market in May, Tammy Parish asked for advice on Front Porch Forum about selling without an agent. She got a flurry of responses from sellers who had done that — as well as several pleas from people who wanted to tour her home.
“My phone blew up. It was people giving me advice saying, ‘Yes, you can do it’ or ‘No, it’s more detailed than you think,’” said Parish, who added that she
lower in a neighboring town because of a local paper mill.
“She said, ‘On the right day you don’t smell it, but on a bad day, not only do you smell it everywhere, the fumes are toxic,’” Phillips said. “Good advice.”
If more negotiations lead to lower commissions, as expected, some agents might leave the profession. The number of real estate agents licensed in Vermont jumped during the pandemic, reaching 3,072 last year — the most since the Secretary of State’s Office started keeping records in 2008. Right now, 2,843 people are licensed to sell real estate, according to the office.
STARTING NEXT MONTH, HOME SELLERS WILL NO LONGER BE REQUIRED TO PAY BUYERS’
AGENTS.
sold her home for $240,000 the following weekend to one of the people who had responded to her query.
Parish hired a lawyer to help with a contract, paying around $2,000, she said. A 5 percent commission would have set her back around $12,000.
“That’s a lot of money to give to someone else for putting pictures out there and marketing it,” she said.
Phillips said more than 25 agents have gotten in touch since she posted an ad for her Westford home on Front Porch Forum in May.
“They all want to represent me,” said Phillips, who thinks a lack of inventory and high interest rates may have created a very slow market for agents. She added that there are times when using an agent is essential. She’s looking for property in Asheville, N.C., where she’ll build her next home, and she said the agent alerted her that land prices were
A Game-Changing Federal Case
THE LAWSUIT
A group of Missourians who had used real estate agents to sell their homes filed a 2019 class-action lawsuit against the 1.5 million member National Association of Realtors and several multistate real estate brokerages. The suit alleged that the defendants had conspired to inflate real estate commissions paid by the homeowners.
THE DETAILS
The lawsuit took aim at the NAR’s “cooperative compensation” rule, which requires the home seller’s agent to offer compensation to the agent for the buyer in order to add the home to a multiple listing service. The suit charged that the NAR, by controlling almost all the multiple listing services in the U.S., was wielding monopoly power to keep commissions artificially high.
THE VERDICT
A federal jury in Missouri ruled for the homeowners in October 2023, awarding them $1.8 billion in damages. The NAR said it would appeal
THE SETTLEMENT
Instead, in March, the NAR settled the case for $418 million in damages and an agreement to change some of its practices.
WHAT WILL CHANGE?
Sellers’ agents won’t set the commission earned by the buyer’s agent. Instead, homebuyers will negotiate directly with those agents for their services. The changes are due to take effect in August.
WHAT’S NEXT?
It’s a tough way to make a living, according to Mikail Stein of RE/MAX North Professionals, who sells about 40 homes a year. Stein said his overhead is high and his hours are long. Income is unpredictable.
“Only in the last two years of my career have I had a winter where I wasn’t freaking out about where things were financially,” Stein said. “And hourly-wise, most people do way better than me.”
Stein thinks career professionals such as him will stay in the business, and if commissions drop, part-time, new or unskilled agents will be most likely to leave.
“I hope what it ends up doing is providing the public with better service,” he said of the NAR settlement. “For those of us who do bring high service, the compensation will be just. And for those who don’t, the market will say, ‘You’re not providing enough.’” ➆
In Vermont, analysts say it is too soon to predict what, if any, impact the settlement will have in the state. Prices are high, driven by a critical shortage of inventory and high demand.
“If I had to guess, I would say Realtors will become less powerful, and maybe there will be more fee-for-service” real estate transactions, said Jeff Lubell, a Norwich resident who works as a principal associate in housing policy for Abt Global, a consulting firm in Rockville, Md. “We’ll see different patterns in different places.”
AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE?
Some real estate companies and analysts say the settlement will hurt low-income homebuyers. Those buyers may not be able to afford to pay an out-of-pocket commission to their agent. Previously that commission was incorporated into the price of the home, and thus into the mortgage paid over time.
Mikail Stein of RE/MAX North Professionals showing a house
On a Curve
Richard Alther’s lakeside home is a memorial to his own history — and Vermont’s
BY AMY LILLY • lilly@sevendaysvt.com
Richard Alther lives on Fort Cassin Point, an island in Ferrisburgh where Otter Creek meets Lake Champlain. In 1814, it was the site of the Battle of Fort Cassin, between the U.S. Navy and a British fleet aiming to destroy American warships being built upriver. The twohour exchange of gunfire resulted in a win for the young republic and was a turning point in the War of 1812.
The date of that battle, May 14, happens to be Alther’s birthday — a stroke of luck in an already fortunate life, he told me on a recent tour of his home. The nearly six-foot-tall 84-year-old has a deeply lined face and a slightly stooped but athletic physique from decades of competitive swimming.
We were standing on the sharp point of land used in the battle, its low shoreline still edged by the undulating earthworks built by the Americans to repel the enemy, though the seven cannons once nestled between the mounds are gone. To one side is the mouth of Otter Creek, screened by trees and brush; in front, the long expanse of Lake Champlain. Across the lake, which is only two miles wide at that point, lies a 10-mile-long, completely forested mountain — part of New York State’s Adirondack Park.
View from the office and library
Richard Alther’s home on Fort Cassin Point in Ferrisburgh overlooking Lake Champlain PHOTOS:
Alther owns this unique spot on Lake Champlain, with an unusually large 1,200 feet of lakefront footage and not another house in sight. The view from his pavilion, perched on a rise a short walk along the shore from the point, reveals 180 degrees of nothing but undeveloped land, water and sky. And a few boats.
“It’s odd to have this much privacy,” Alther said, adding that there are only five other houses on the 26-acre island, which is reached by a gravel causeway.
Odd, too, that Alther used to visit this very spot as a child every summer while growing up in New Jersey.
Raised in humble circumstances by his grandparents, he came as a guest of his grandfather’s fishing buddy, a Wall Street banker. His host belonged to the Fort Cassin Club, a Methodist-affiliated bankers’ retreat with a clubhouse that was built on the point in 1876.
After attending Cornell University and launching an advertising career in New York City, Alther moved to Vermont. He cofounded the home power equipment company Country Home Products in Vergennes and took up master’s swimming, in which he competed nationally for 25 years. A painter from a young age, he also shows and sells his artwork and writes novels.
and highlighting numerous sculptures and accenting the stunning views. Low stone walls seem always to curve.
Similarly, the house’s historic half-hexagonal shape is repeated in a screened porch and in the pavilion. In fact, almost no space in or outside the house is rectilinear. Recessed diagonal walls frame the front door, beside a pleasantly tinkling abstract stone sculpture fountain.
Inside, the modest entry becomes an event, with cathedral-height skylights and a movie set-like tile step and pathway that spans two black infinityedge fountains flush with the floor. The sound of moving water in the foyer is intriguingly difficult to square with the invisibility of its movement. Among the artworks in the space, in metal, glass and oil, is Alther’s own 10-foot-wide abstract painting in muted tans, grays and blue, a calming composition hinting at stone and water.
ALMOST NO SPACE IN OR OUTSIDE THE HOUSE IS RECTILINEAR.
Alther was delighted to discover his childhood summer vacation spot on the market. He purchased the Fort Cassin property in 1979 — he still swims to Diamond Island, a mile off his shore, once a year. He eventually bought the lot next door, too, replacing the rotting house on the site with the pavilion. His house is the clubhouse he visited as a child, wholly renovated and with several additions. Still, echoes of the original structure remain in the shape of the double-height living room with its half-hexagonal wall facing the lake; parts of the stone foundation; and the roofline of the room he uses as a painting studio. In his bedroom hangs a large friendship quilt made in 1900 by the Wall Street bankers’ wives.
With his husband of 20 years, musician Raymond Repp, who died in 2020, Alther turned the enlarged plot and its structures into a unified work of art, dotted with more art inside and out. Weybridge builder Clark Sutton and a team that included Bob Coates designed much of the house; Mad River Valley architect John Anderson had early input.
Alther’s landscaper, Andrea Morgante of Hinesburg, might have been inspired by the subtle mounds of the battlement earthworks: The lawn, ground cover and beds all undulate, screening, revealing
Past Alther’s painting lies the main part of the house, which starts with a long built-in bar with glass shelves supporting full sets of glasses in every possible shape. Alther and Repp entertained every weekend, he said, and even wrote a cookbook together.
A different path from the foyer leads past a sculptural swirl of orange blown-glass objects affixed to the wall and into the bedroom. There, a high, trapezoidal ceiling lined in dark cherrywood slopes toward a sweeping lake view captured in a row of tall windows topped with shorter ones — a pattern that repeats throughout the house. A massive cherry bed creates an island in the center of the carpeted room. No other furniture is necessary, because built-ins fill an extensive bathroom behind one partial wall and a generously outfitted walk-in closet behind another — or rather, a walk-through closet, a roughly triangular room that leads to the main house.
The lake can be spotted from nearly every room of the mostly open-plan house, and Alther’s carefully curated and installed collection of art complements the water views. Works by Vermonters Barbara Wagner, Alice Murdoch and Catherine Hall hang alongside prints by nationally famous Helen Frankenthaler and Alice Neel. On a side table in the living room sits a tall, porous white porcelain bowl. Its delicate shape and material are a pleasing contrast to the heavy central stone chimney, as well as to the sculptural metal chandelier that
Richard Alther
Alther and Repp commissioned from Burlington’s Conant Metal & Light.
Alther’s own skillful watercolors of buildings and landscapes, the result of studying with Fairfax watercolorist Larry Goldsmith, fill the dining room.
“They go down easily,” Alther said frankly about them. He moved on to abstraction long ago and is currently reworking a painting in his studio whose composition he feels could be improved. On a table beside his easel are meticulously arranged tubes of paint and brushes. “I’m a neatnik,” he explained.
Over the years, Alther’s work has been exhibited in London, Los Angeles, Montréal, at
his alma mater and in Vermont galleries such as the now-closed Four Winds in Ferrisburgh. Fifteen of his large abstract oil paintings are on permanent display in the oncology wing of the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington. On September 14, a solo show of his work is scheduled for Wake Robin retirement community in Shelburne, where he keeps an apartment “for if and when.”
Back outside, Alther pointed out the spot where he used to dive into the lake at age 8: a series of horizontal rock shelves at water level, an unusual respite from the mostly rocky bluffs of Lake Champlain’s shoreline.
“I feel so fortunate that I had this background in Vermont as a boy,” he commented. “Living in Vermont has allowed for such a rich life.” ➆
On a Curve « P.9 PHOTOS: BEAR CIERI
The living room and a seating area in an alcove
One of the many large sculptures on the property
The soothing sounds of a water feature, subtle tones and fine art greet visitors in the foyer. Lakeside gazebo
Sculptures mimicking natural shapes are highlighted inside and out.
Porch Song
The Green Mountain State is blessed with an abundance of places for cooling o in summer — lakes, rivers, pools, swimming holes. But when it’s time to chill, nothing beats a good porch.
Vermont houses haven’t always featured porches — they first gained popularity in the late 19th century — but anyone who has one will attest to their enduring appeal. Screened in or covered, facing the street, mountains, water or woods, porches beckon us to slow down, put our feet up and take in the moment.
Warren architect Dave Sellers calls the porch “a handshake with the natural world,” a transition zone between the safety of the home and the untamed outdoors. Author Thomas Christopher Greene wrote Notes From the Porch, a collection of vignettes from the pandemic lockdown, while sitting on the porch of his Montpelier Victorian watching humanity go by.
A porch is where we sip co ee in the morning, read a newspaper and dip a toe into the day. It’s where we settle in for a good book, greet friends and neighbors, play cards, and drink beer late into the evening. This time of year, many of us do more living on our porches than in our actual living rooms. For insight into that lifestyle, Nest visited four porches across the state.
“How you doing, sir? Good to see ya!” Billy Bratcher chirped to a man walking by the front porch of his house on Burlington’s North Avenue. The blistering heat of summer hadn’t arrived yet, but Bratcher, relaxing in a rocking chair in a white linen suit and boater hat, was ready with glasses of lemonade for himself and a guest.
The afternoon provided ideal porch weather: low 80s, sunny, a slight southerly breeze. Jazz music from a Sidney Bechet record wafted through the screen door from a phonograph inside. Overhead, a Havana-style ceiling fan stirred the air, ri ing a Bread and Puppet Theater banner on the wall. A bellhop ashtray stood at attention in a corner, an ode to Bratcher’s 30-year career in the hospitality industry. On an end table sat a pot with tiny flowers and a book aptly titled Out on the Porch. Cedar wainscoting with tulip cutouts envelops the arts-and-crafts-style porch, which Bratcher added himself.
How Vermonters take it outside in the summertime
BY KEN PICARD • ken@sevendaysvt.com
Sipping and Strumming in Burlington’s New North End
built for returning World War II veterans, previously belonged to a meatcutter from Bessery’s Butcher Shoppe & Delicatessen, several doors away. Though modest in size, the porch gets plenty of use. Every evening at six o’clock, Bratcher and his family gather there for cocktails.
HERE’S THE THING ABOUT A PORCH: IT’S GOOD FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.
BILLY BRATCHER
At 61, Bratcher spends much of his time on the porch of the house he bought 26 years ago. The 1949 cottage, one of many in the New North End
“I’m out on the porch more than anyone on North Avenue. No doubt about it,” Bratcher boasted as he picked up an acoustic guitar made by a Burlington luthier.
This porch is where Bratcher, the longtime upright bass player for the Starline Rhythm Boys, wrote most of the songs for the rockabilly trio. And in April, when northern Vermont celebrated a once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse, Bratcher was strumming on the porch as totality occurred.
“Here’s the thing about a porch: It’s good for your mental health,” he explained. “And it’s good for the pleasure of companionship with your friends and family. It’s like ‘The Andy Gri th Show.’ True Americana.”
Billy Bratcher on his front porch on North Avenue in Burlington
Reuse, Recycle and Relax in Warren
Dave Sellers never planned to add a back porch to his house in Warren. It took a devastating fire in New Hampshire’s White Mountains to spark the idea and provide the essential materials.
In 1975, Sellers was driving through Lincoln, N.H., when a blaze at the historic Lincoln Hotel slowed tra c. Among the smoldering ruins of the 70-year-old inn, he noticed four massive white Roman-style pillars — lying on the ground but intact.
“Can I have them?” Sellers asked a firefighter. “He said, ‘Yeah, but you’ve got 10 minutes.’”
Spotting a trailer rental store across the street, Sellers got the largest one available. He borrowed a backhoe and loaded the columns, each weighing 1,000 pounds, onto the trailer, then hauled them back to Vermont.
The average passerby most likely wouldn’t have recognized the columns’ value, let alone had a truck hefty enough to move them. But Sellers, now 85, is a Yale School of Architecture graduate who moved to the Mad River Valley in the 1960s to do unconventional home
building. His projects have included the restoration of Warren’s historic Pitcher Inn, which abuts Freeman Brook and is visible from Sellers’ backyard.
After stripping the paint o the columns, Sellers discovered they were made of Douglas fir, with double tongue-and-groove joints holding the headers and footers.
“I bet these columns would cost $25,000 to make today,” he said. “I found a treasure.”
It took five years, but Sellers eventually used them to build a porch on the back of his house, a 19thcentury former horse carriage barn that he bought, abandoned, in 1970 for $1,000. Using two of the pillars as its main supports, he styled the addition after a Montpelier courthouse and included a screened-in sleeping porch above it. Inside it are triangular skylights and cutout windows to provide a nice cross-breeze, with a foam mattress on the floor.
Much of the porch was constructed from salvaged materials, such as two decorative gas pump globes from the 1930s.
“People come into the backyard [of the Pitcher Inn] and think [the porch] is the Parthenon,” Sellers said with a chuckle. “I love finding all these cool old things and giving new life to them.”
Sellers’ back porch in Warren
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Lakeside Living in Burlington
When Bill Bosley bought an old mill house at the corner of Lakeside and Central avenues, he knew something essential was missing. Burlington’s Lakeside neighborhood has scores of porches, including one across the street at the Saint John’s Club. But his duplex lacked one — or any suitable spot for sitting outdoors. So Bosley swapped his carport for a front porch, which gave him and his family a front-row seat for the sunsets on Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains.
Bosley is a builder who splits his time between Burlington and Nyack, N.Y. As he explained, many zoning ordinances in Vermont and New York count covered porches toward a house’s floor-area ratio, the total living space allowed for its lot size. Bosley considers such restrictions unfair, especially in Vermont, where porches don’t get “lived in” for much of the year.
IT’S AN INVITING FACE ON A HOUSE, AND IT’S GOOD FOR NEIGHBORHOODS.
BILL BOSLEY
In fact, when Bosley built a subdivision in Clarkstown, N.Y., the town penalized him for including porches on all the houses. After complaining to the building department, he brought town o cials on a field trip to see the new neighborhood. Ultimately, he convinced them to change the ordinance to encourage porches. Why?
“It’s an inviting face on a house, and it’s good for neighborhoods,” Bosley said.
Provided, that is, the porch is big enough for people to congregate and not just serve as a decorative flourish or storage space for skis and bicycles.
A livable porch needs to be at least six to eight feet deep, he explained; anything smaller and everyone sits in a row, which is less conducive to conversation. Bosley built his deep enough to put four chairs around a table, where everyone can gather for meals and take in the sunsets.
“When you sit on the porch, people walk by all day and say hi to each other,” he added. “When I retire, I don’t want to be in the woods. I want to be in a community.”
Above: e view of Lake Champlain from Bill Bosley’s porch
Left: Bosley’s duplex on Lakeside Avenue in Burlington
PHOTOS: KEN PICARD
A Peak Experience in Waterbury Center
100 Ave D Williston • 802-864-9831 showroom@blodgettsupply.com
Belva Hayden didn’t have a porch on her house growing up in Youngstown, Ohio. But as a child, she often visited her grandparents’ house in Orlando, Fla., which did have one. At night, all the kids would pile onto a couch on the porch and watch the movies playing at the drive-in theater next door. The theater’s owner even gave them portable speakers so they could hear the movie.
Cushman Design Group and built by Steel Construction in Stowe, Hayden’s house sits on about a dozen acres at an elevation of 1,500 feet. The porch is fully screened in from floor to ceiling, including beneath the floorboards, to keep out the insects. Alongside the porch, at the back of the house, sits an expansive open deck with lounge chairs, a gas grill and about a dozen potted plants, including a small lemon tree that actually bears fruit.
When Hayden moved to Waterbury Center with her husband two years ago, she knew a screened-in porch would be an essential part of their new build. While there’s no drive-in nearby, there’s plenty to see, including wildlife, foliage, and spectacular views of Lincoln Peak, Camel’s Hump and Mount Mansfield. “You have to be able to come outside and enjoy all this,” Hayden said.
Designed by Milford Cushman of
This time of year, the 58-year-old retired aerospace engineer is on her porch as much as possible, often eating meals at the round tile-mosaic table she brought back from Italy 20 years ago.
“This is the perfect weather for it. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, naps,” she said. “Plus, our whole family is pretty fair, so we like to stay out of the sun.”
From the porch, Hayden can also keep an eye on her garden below and find out which of the local critters — coyotes, foxes, bears — are raiding her compost pile. ➆
Belva Hayden’s porch with mountain views in Waterbury Center
Porch Song « P.16
JACKSON, WYOMING
ALPINE, WYOMING
DRIGGS, IDAHO
PARK CITY, UTAH
STOW E, VERMONT
True Colors
An
immersive gift shop and new boutique lodging bring vibrant design to Wallingford
BY ALISON NOVAK • alison@sevendaysvt.com
In interior design and life, Stacy Harshman doesn’t pay much attention to the rules. The 51-year-old artist and entrepreneur moved to Vermont from New York City nine years ago, seeking a more grounded, peaceful life and a sense of community. Two business launches later, she’s made her freespirited mark on Wallingford, turning the small, rural town between Rutland and Manchester into a veritable design destination.
In 2017, Harshman opened the Sparkle Barn and Bloom Room, a whimsical, treasure-filled gift shop and art installation, in a 19th-century dairy barn on Route 7. She bought another historic property in 2022, the former White Rocks Inn on 18 acres just down the road, and spent nearly a year transforming it into a boutique lodge she named Sparkle on the Rocks. Earlier this year, she began renting out the four-bedroom retreat, located a few miles from the White Rocks National Recreation Area, for overnight stays.
The two venues serve different purposes but share an aesthetic: bold, maximalist and bursting with color. When picking out items for each space, Harshman said, she let her heart guide her more than her head.
“When I am inspired, I get a feeling in my body that is very energized, tingly and warm,” she explained. “If something doesn’t feel good in my body, even if I really want it intellectually, I’m not going to get whatever it is.”
Wallingford is a long way from where Harshman
Top: The Bloom Room at the Sparkle Barn in Wallingford Bottom: Stacy Harshman of the Sparkle Barn and Sparkle on the Rocks
WHEN I AM INSPIRED, I GET A FEELING IN MY BODY THAT IS VERY ENERGIZED, TINGLY AND WARM.
grew up in central Illinois, on a farm surrounded by flat, seemingly endless cornfields. Driven by wanderlust, she lived in Spain, France, Costa Rica and Panama before settling in Manhattan in the early 2000s. There, Harshman pursued various creative endeavors: She recorded six folk and rock albums, imported and sold tribal rugs from her East Village apartment, and made unique glass lighting fixtures inspired by vintage cocktail swizzle sticks. She also conducted a social experiment in
which she wore different-colored wigs around the city and gauged people’s reactions, which she chronicled in her book Crowning Glory: An Experiment in Self-Discovery Through Disguise. With grandparents who owned an antique store and a mother who worked as an interior designer, Harshman always had a knack for selecting special items
and decorating spaces. Having her own shop appealed to her “because I knew I could fill it with stuff that people would buy,” she said.
A couple of years after moving to Rutland County in 2015, Harshman was perusing real estate listings and came across the Wallingford barn, which previously housed an antique store. She
knew immediately that it would make the perfect retail location. Today her unique gift shop attracts people from every corner of Vermont — and beyond. She’s had visitors from Canada, Maine, Texas and California.
Before stepping inside the Sparkle Barn, visitors encounter the Magic Garden, an outdoor installation composed of oversize metal flowers sprouting from multicolored gravel; a Technicolor mural depicting a unicorn, mermaid and butterflies; and a spray of glass discs affixed to the barn’s exterior and interspersed with fish and other sea creatures to present a fantastical underwater tableau.
As a child, Harshman dreamed of having a stained-glass house. She’s created a mini version of it in the entryway to the Sparkle Barn, featuring dozens of stained-glass pieces procured from architectural salvage shops. Two are originally from a bakery in France; another once hung in a Brooklyn church.
The store itself is packed from floor to ceiling with a wide assortment of decorative goods, toys and art. Wind chimes, colorful glass orbs and flapping bird mobiles hang from the ceiling. Items are playfully grouped by themes, including fairies, rainbows, crows and horses.
A roll of washi tape printed with cats and a mermaid-themed headband cost less than $5 each, while an original painting or stained-glass panel might ring up at several hundred dollars. For those in the market for unusual home goods, the options are plentiful — from mango-wood cheese boards inlaid with constellation designs ($25.99) to patterned mini-shades that turn a wine glass into a table lamp ($14). Garden décor includes handblown glass hummingbird feeders ($34 to $65), birdhouses made from recycled food wrappers ($19.99), and rainbow flag garlands featuring chickens or honeybees ($38).
A sparkly mosaic wall lines the stairwell that leads to the Bloom Room, an immersive space complete with larger-than-life flowers and butterflies and a suspended centerpiece dripping with bouquets. A green shag carpet stands in for grass, while chairs in the shape of petals provide comfy perches from which to take in the view.
“I wanted to create a room where one feels part of a fantasy garden,” Harshman explained.
STACY HARSHMAN
Top: The Magic Garden at the Sparkle Barn
Left: Aerial view of Sparkle on the Rocks
According to several guest books in the Bloom Room, visitors have embraced the fantasy.
“It’s so pretty. I wish it was my bedroom,” one entry in kid’s handwriting reads.
“This is such a healing space where the energy is so pure,” reads another entry, this one from a Castleton college student.
A note from someone in recovery reads: “As I sit in my own uncomfort, my own misery, there is a moment of reprieve ... Thank you for making this place.”
Just a third of a mile down Route 7, Harshman’s new project, Sparkle on the Rocks, has a similar soul-filling energy. From the outside, the boutique inn looks like a stately farmhouse — white with black shutters and flanked on one side by an inviting screened-in porch. But the vibe changes completely once one enters through the bright pink back door.
Each room is a feast for the eyes, with its own theme and layer on layer of décor. The foyer is Moroccan-inspired, with a gold-and-aqua woven pattern stenciled on
and
throw
jeweled
fixtures. The
from Anthropologie, and chairs from Target are covered in flora-and-faunaprinted fabric. At the center is a swoonworthy farmhouse table that seats 10, purchased at Perfectpiece in Manchester.
The variety of places from which Harshman sources furnishings illustrates her eclectic design sensibility. Affordable throw pillows and side tables from online retailers such as Wayfair are mixed and matched with antique and custom pieces, such as jewel-toned Murano glass light fixtures and decorative Belgian wall tiles. Upstairs, each of the four bedrooms has a distinct personality. The Glam Garden features an explosion of floral pillows on a sleigh bed, bright yellow curtains, pops of pink paint and a wall of stained-glass butterflies. The Prairie Girl Suite, in contrast, is more subtly feminine with a soft color palette, though there are still lots of patterns and prints.
Harshman’s own multimedia art
one wall, patterned
rugs,
mirrors,
ornate gold light
dining room boasts a woodland motif: A fox and a deer adorn hand-carved cabinets
Above: A sitting room at Sparkle on the Rocks Left: The Glam Garden bedroom
True Colors « P.21
hangs throughout Sparkle on the Rocks. Works from a series entitled “Second Flight” showcase preserved butterflies pinned on glossy, iridescent canvases. Other creations incorporate dried flowers and thick layers of drippy paint.
Harshman likens her painting process to the way a jazz musician improvises. “You never know how they’re going to turn out,” she said.
She also takes a spontaneous approach
when it comes to future projects. Harshman is working to double the size of the Bloom Room, which she hopes to use for community gatherings such as poetry readings, plays and standup comedy — something she started doing regularly before the pandemic. She recently purchased a 26-foot box truck on a whim; she plans to decorate the inside with layers of flowers and turn it into a mobile Bloom Room for parties and events.
It’s just one more way for Harshman to spread sparkle across Vermont. ➆
The Sparkle Barn and Bloom Room, 1509 Route 7, Wallingford, 446-2044, thesparklebarn.com
Sparkle on the Rocks, 1774 Route 7, Wallingford, 446-2044, sparkleontherocks.com
Garden, Interrupted
Author and gardening consultant Maggie Herskovits celebrates the resilience of urban plant life
At the end of a vast parking lot gritty with spilled gravel, a woman in a plantprint jacket gestured to what some might call an urban wasteland. The lot by Burlington’s Perkins Pier is ringed by train tracks, the loading docks of businesses and stubborn clumps of dusty weeds — hardly a place most people would expect to start a plant walk.
But Maggie Herskovits is di erent from most people. The gardening consultant and author said she had a “gardener’s existential crisis” when she was pulling weeds for a park in New York City.
“I was like, Wait, this [plant] is also alive. What am I doing?” she recalled. “That’s when I really started to
learn more about plants as beings, more than just their names and that they’re ‘bad.’”
Herskovits eventually quit working for city parks and launched a garden consulting business, Pathway to Plant, that gives due consideration to spontaneously growing plants, even the ones most people think of as weeds. Now living with her husband and young son in Winooski, she o ers gardening services, publishes hand-drawn urban plant guides and hosts educational experiences such as monthly urban plant walks through Burlington’s Railyard Apothecary.
One past experience that shaped Herskovits’ sensibility was her work as a horticultural therapist at Rikers Island prison. The program had minimal resources to fund a garden. “It kind of opened me up to the creativity of lack,” she said.
She recounted how one of the prison courtyard gardens had di cult soil conditions and little sunlight, yet inmates found being there therapeutic. Herskovits discovered bladder campion, a white-flowered “weed”
with ethereal balloon-shaped swellings rising behind its petals, growing on one side of the courtyard. She and the inmates intentionally transferred the flower to the newly created garden.
“It was so pretty,” she said. “That really helped to click in my brain … that beauty is where you choose to see it.”
As Herskovits studied bladder campion and other often banished beauties, she began sketching them,
STORY & PHOTO BY RACHEL MULLIS
Maggie Herskovits leading an urban plant walk in Burlington
eventually collecting and publishing her drawings as informational zines.
“Art has a really nice way of distilling deep, challenging concepts so that they’re easier to digest,” she said. With her plant guides, Herskovits aims to inspire a fun and joyful approach to exploring one’s surroundings.
Herskovits’ first book, An Urban Field Guide to the Plants, Trees, and Herbs in Your Path, will be published by Microcosm Publishing in early 2025. In it, she highlights yellow rocket, a biennial herb with a penchant for showing up unannounced. Native
to Eurasia, the plant is considered a noxious weed in some parts of the U.S. But to Herskovits, it’s a “beautiful addition to a spring wildflower bouquet” and “delicious as a bitter spring green.” She draws the plant with the care of a portrait artist, noting its bright yellow flowers, slender seed pods and popularity with bees.
While researching her book, she learned that the bladder campion she found in the prison courtyard was originally introduced from Europe as an ornamental flower for gardens. In other words, people once cherished it for its beauty — until it fell out of favor and something else was deemed more beautiful.
“Maybe this flower doesn’t fit our mold right now. Maybe it was too, as they say, ‘aggressive’ and escaped cultivation,” she said. “As soon as the
LANDSCAPES
plant makes choices for itself, we kind of vilify it.”
With Pathway to Plant, Herskovits cultivates a more open-minded approach to gardening, offering her clients on-site consultations, recommended plant lists, design plans and installations. Sometimes her service involves buying plants, but other times it’s about designing what’s already there in a more intentional way. Using existing plants lowers the cost of landscape design, making her service more accessible to gardeners and plant lovers on a budget.
She recently worked with a Burlington client who had maintained several large, lush garden beds. But when he moved out of his building and began leasing to tenants, the beds became haphazard and unruly. Instead of buying plants, Herskovits and the client’s property manager, Peter Steinhoff, dug up everything and divided it to fit in smaller beds that would be easier to maintain.
Herskovits has “changed the way I look at redesigns and plans because, in a lot of cases, the plants you need are already on-site,” Steinhoff said.
“She’s an infinite well of information when it comes to plant and perennial knowledge.”
Too many people assume that a plant from a nursery is superior to one
Swift Sales, Maximum Returns
Illustrations by Maggie Herskovits
growing spontaneously, Herskovits said. She’s visited nurseries that sell different-colored cultivars of wild carrot — a plant that grows wild in Vermont.
“It looks different from the wild version, so people assume it’s worth spending money on,” she said.
Hiring Herskovits to tackle a home garden isn’t the only way to glean her knowledge — her urban plant walks offer plenty of info and inspiration. As attendees crunched across the gravel lot on the recent walk by Perkins Pier, she pointed out pioneer species, the only kind of plants that can grow in the bare, nutrient-poor ground. Left alone, these species would soon be replaced by other plants until the ecosystem eventually evolved into a climax community, such as a hardwood forest. But in Burlington, the plants’ growth is perennially interrupted by human activity: construction, trampling, urine and even pesticides.
MAGGIE HERSKOVITS
“Change is what makes this environment what it is,” Herskovits said. At the corner of Battery and Maple streets, she introduced walkers to one such pioneer species: mugwort, a dense, leafy plant with purplish-brown stems. She called it the quintessential urban weed.
Attendees touched the undersides of the leaves, which are covered in little hairs that give them a silvery appearance, then crushed a leaf to release its mild citrus scent. In addition to aiding lucid dreaming, Herskovits said, mugwort was once used to flavor beer. Apparently, its hallucinogenic properties weren’t helpful in sedating the masses, though, and the leaves were replaced by hops.
“Now we see mugwort as a nuisance,” she said. “But back in the day, people saw it as something that could open up their minds.”
The tour continued up Maple Street and north on South Champlain. Herskovits helped the group identify a wild carrot, noting that its taproot allows it to squeeze into tight spaces and that moths and butterflies love its white flowers.
Broadleaf plantain was next, followed by horsetail, white clover, shepherd’s purse and wild lettuce. Then daylilies, bouncing-bet and chickweed, a diminutive plant that’s great in salads.
Along South Champlain, Herskovits was disheartened to discover that a vacant lot that once exemplified an urban meadow had been disrupted, again. The cause? Construction in the neighboring park. The herbs and small trees that had grown unbidden along a fence had been trampled and covered in soil.
But Herskovits’ hardy optimism won out as she shared stories about the plants that remained: beloved goldenrod, with its sunlit display of tiny flowers on arching branches; bitter chicory, which removes heavy metals from soil; and burdock, which has a long history of use in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine. She pointed out red clover, the state flower of Vermont; the common violet, with its edible, medicinal flowers; and common mallow, with its quirky seed heads resembling old-fashioned spheres of waxed cheese.
Some of these plants have long taproots to draw nutrients from deep in the soil, while others have fibrous rhizomes that stabilize the ground. They all work together to bring life to the city, she said. ➆
INFO
Learn more about Pathway to Plant at pathwaytoplant.com and about Maggie Herskovits’ urban plant walks under Classes at railyardapothecary.com.
