Mill Pond Garden to showcase early spring blooms
Mill Pond Garden will welcome visitors to enjoy the beauties of early spring from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., Friday, March 22, and Sunday, March 24, at 31401 Melloy Court, Lewes.
Tickets, available for the date of choice at millpondgarden.com, are $18 to admit a vehicle with up to six visitors, or cash only at the gate. Note that on sunny days, the flowers are generally more open than on cloudy days. The garden, wheelchair accessible with a pusher, is open rain or shine but may close immediately with threat of high wind, lightning or ice storms.
The newly completed fountain folly will be shared for the first time, and the recently installed glade garden will debut for public viewing. This is the usual time for the colorful wood ducks’ return to the nest box on the garden pier. Frogs and basking turtles along with various local birds may be seen, as well as many of the Eastern Flyway migratory birds that stop by Red Mill Pond on their way north to breed. Predatory birds including ospreys, great blue herons, green herons and bald eagles are likely to be around, as well as ducks, geese, cormorants and more.
Visitors will find the garden fragrant and floriferous in early spring, with blossoms expected on the forsythia, early rhododendrons, blue forget-me-nots, early tulips, crocus, grape hyacinths, large hyacinths, camellias, hellebores, iris, squills, snowdrops and many native ephemerals like blood root, fairy bells, woodland phlox and trillium.
The gardens’ collection of hellebores and camellias, with more than a score of species and cultivars of each, is the largest and most varied in the region. The opportunity to see these wonderful plants established and in full flower may help gardeners find and choose what they would like best for their home gardens. Seeing a plant in a nursery is seldom very revealing of its whole future look; a preview in a natural setting is a good idea.
Mill Pond Garden encompasses beautifully landscaped grounds and 2,000 feet of pathways, graced with nine water features and opening onto vistas of Red Mill Pond with its abundant birds and other wildlife, all surrounded by stands of majestic native trees, especially giant oaks and loblolly pines.
Visitors new to the region may take advantage of this public garden as a good opportunity to see the varieties of plants that can perform well here, and to get helpful information for plant choices and design ideas. Others may enjoy it for photography and its meditative beauty. Cameras are welcome.
