Past Winners

The Garden of Donna Robertson and Carol Hinckley

As oft’ quoted gardener, Augusta Carter, remarked, “You don’t have a garden just for yourself.  You have it to share.”  This spirit of reciprocity and collaboration is so clearly personified in the joint recipients of the  AGC’s third in series Garden of the Month award.

Congratulations to Donna Robertson and Carol Hinckley, 32-34 Steeple View Drive, Atkinson, whose decade long gardening alliance is not only  a celebration of an ongoing friendship but a testament to the beauty and bounty of back yard gardening times two!

While the generous front vistas of these Steeple View Drive homes are to be admired - stately stone    walls, pink and yellow blossoms surrounding the elegant lampposts drenched in an abundance of purple clematis, mounds of blue hydrangea providing background interest - the adjoining gardens behind the two homes are a delight to behold.

Visitors are greeted by rolling swathes of immaculately tended lawn, with mass plantings of purple and white impatiens, seamlessly rimming the woodland perimeter across both properties.  The more linear arrangements are interplanted with complementary clusters of variegated hosta, coneflowers and low growing evergreens.   Pink, white and coral phlox provide perfect counterpoint to the orange azaleas and darker magenta rhododendrons.  Drifts of purple coneflowers and yellow and white Shasta daisies warmly welcome visitors, and birdhouses and bird baths provide wonderful points of interest and lead the eye to the various island gardens on the properties.  

Behind Carol’s home , a birdbath and the quintessential statue of a little boy and his dog gone fishing, are nestled in an island of yellow coreopsis, astilbe, and yellow and white daisies.  She has also potted up several tomato plants, heavy with ripening fruit for those summer salads or fresh off the vine. Closer to the center of the garden, near Donna’s  home, is an island which hosts a birdbath with a small angel perched on the rim.  She appears to be reveling in the red-orange, yellow tinged roses, swaying beside her in the summer breeze. Clumps of grasses, rhododendrons, coneflowers and other low growing plantings complete this island delight.

Pines, maples and black birches area few of the varieties of shade trees which provide a cool and dappled refuge in the Robertson-Hinckley gardens.   In a natural, evergreen shaded alcove,  a  path of stepping stones leads to a welcoming  memorial bench enveloped by a  tranquil garden designed by the Robertsons.

Both Carol and Donna attest to the fact that countless gardening hours have been logged in their ten year collaboration and the work is never ending – always planning, pruning, planting, weeding - as all gardeners know.  And not only have they dealt with the onslaught of the usual garden pest and insects we all encounter, but have also weathered the intrusions of deer, fox, skunks, wild turkeys and even the occasional bear!  We applaud them for their remarkable, ongoing gardening creations and wish them many more decades as friends and gardeners together.