A place to get away

Sean McCarthy

There are unique virtues that can only come from being in and around nature. From a leisurely walk to a meditative rest, or just being immersed in the diverse beauty, the outdoors can provide respite, rejuvenation, and sanctuary any day and time of the year.

A visit to Haskell Public Gardens can be beneficial and enjoyable in a variety of ways. This six-acre site in the west end of New Bedford is free and open to all from sunrise to sunset every day of the year, providing an array of botanical attractions, art, and creative programming. Whether you’d like to do some snowshoeing in the winter, yoga on a summer night, educate your children, or just get away for a bit, this location can be accommodating to multiple interests and needs.

Education, entertainment, and escape are available at Haskell Public Gardens. “Our location is particularly beneficial for city folks,” says Kristin McCullin, Horticulturalist at Haskell Public Gardens. “Even if you’re in nature for 10 minutes you’ll lower your stress hormones. It will ground you, and get you back into yourself a little more. We’ve found, during the pandemic especially, that there is an awareness to getting out into nature and the outdoors are really helpful to people in the community.”

Located at 787 Shawmut Avenue, Haskell Public Gardens offers a variety of gardens, spaces, and trails with an expansive botanical collection. Whether it’s vegetables, flowers, perennials, shrubs or trees, this outdoor environment is continually evolving and expanding with the seasons, offering something fresh and new to visitors throughout the year. Each plant, shrub, and tree is tagged with its name and an identification number, so if you find something you would like for yourself, you can get the positive ID and make a plant request at your local nursery to see if they can provide it.

If you’re interested in gardening and growing for yourself, Haskell offers educational classes in areas such as pruning and propagation of new plants throughout the year.

“Education is a big thing for us,” McCullin says. “If you see something and want to learn more about it we’re happy to teach you.”

A CONTEMPLATIVE SPACE

There’s a lot to learn; among their extensive collection, Haskell Gardens specializes in nursery-sized rare and unusual evergreens such as Japanese maples and hostas. They have four greenhouses on the campus in addition to a sprawling acre-long lawn that is a setting for events.

Throughout the gardens there is art complementing the landscape, including pieces of sculpture by regional artists that blend with the flora, providing guests with a unique nature experience. During the more enjoyable weather there are concerts, DJs, and theatre events, as well as classes in yoga, meditation, wellness, and mindfulness. Guests are invited to bring blankets and enjoy picnics on the grounds. Private tours are also available.

This past spring, Haskell hosted two plant sales. The location has also provided events with vendors and farmer’s markets.

“We’re a work in progress,” McCullin says. “We’re always doing something new, whether it’s an event or an installation.”

All of Haskell Gardens’s opportunities can be found at their website, thetrustees. org/place/allen-c-haskellpublic-gardens. They can also be found on Instagram (@haskellgardens), and on Facebook (The Trustees - Haskell Public Gardens).

The grounds are accessible throughout winter as well. This September, Haskell will debut a new garden room that features plants native to southeastern Massachusetts with a spiral pathway, described by McCullin as a “contemplative space” that will host meditation classes. But McCullin doesn’t run it alone – Haskell has a staff of more than two dozen volunteers offering their time and contributing to projects such as fine gardening, maintaining the collections, and landscaping.

Rose Grant of Fall River volunteers at Haskell one morning a week, doing gardening. A retired high school Biology teacher, she also does photography for the garden’s social media.

“Volunteering has been a great learning experience about how plants grow, the soil requirements, the names and identifications of the plants,” Grant says. “It’s also important for me to be able to give back to the community. It’s a beautiful property and I love that we’re maintaining a green space in a residential area. It’s awesome that a lot of people who live in the vicinity and don’t really have much of a yard of their own can walk through here at any time of the day. They can have a picnic and their kids can play.”

The gardens are named for the late Allen C. Haskell, a New Bedford native who first started visiting the grounds when it was a farm, riding his bike to take painting lessons from owner Louise Beech. Eventually Haskell took an interest in gardening, beginning with a vegetable garden, but expanding into unusual genuses such as hostas, conifers, and Asian plants and trees.

“We’re running out of these spaces in our world,” Grant says. “So the fact that we’re maintaining this green space in the middle of the city is an amazing thing to do.”

Opened in October of 2014, Haskell Public Gardens is managed by The Trustees, a Massachusetts-based land trust that also preserves lighthouses, beaches, historic houses, farms and gardens. To become a member and support this nonprofit and all the good work at Haskell Gardens, consider joining at thetrustees.org/membership.