Bay Windows

The brownstone residences in Boston's Back Bay and Beacon Hill neighborhoods maintain some lovely window box displays. In summer, they spill over with impatiens, petunias, and primroses; trail tiny daisies, lobelia, and ivy; sprout coleus and caladium, geraniums and dracaena spikes. In fall, they transition to mums and fountain grass, Indian corn and miniature pumpkins, tiny asters and ornamental kale.

Since they always look perfectly maintained, we wondered when the owners had time to keep them watered and deadheaded and trimmed, especially given how difficult to reach some of them are. Then one day we saw a landscaper planting the fall displays in the building around the corner and we realized that professionals were probably most often involved.

I used to plant window boxes and a half-barrel at my condo in Grafton. Far from the tony neighborhoods of Boston, it didn't matter if the petunias got weedy, the geraniums wilted, or the cosmos were an entirely wrong choice for container gardening. It was my little patch of garden, an attempt to bloom where I was planted.

Comments

[Mouse]

Yes, in France I also maintained an exuberant display of flowers in the courtyard, on the window sills, along the wall... An old lady once stopped me in Callac market and said "I know you, you're the lady in the dentist's old house, the one with all the flowers". I think that's a lovely way to be described, n'est-ce pas?

One day, when I finally feel at home somewhere I will resume my exuberant displays, I will be, once more, 'bien fleuris'!

[Leslee]

Mouse: Sounds lovely. I hope you'll be "bien fleuris" très bientôt!

[marja-leena]

These remind me of some lovely window boxes I saw in London! Maybe it's the style of buildings and windows too...