Perfect summer day highlights annual House and Garden tour

Posted:  Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - 8:45am

Share: 

A sunny day provided the perfect backdrop for the sixth annual Boothbay Region Garden Club’s home and garden tour,  “The Sea Around Us” on Friday, July 21. The tour highlighted six beautiful homes, including two in Southport, four in the Ocean Point area and one on Barter’s Island in Boothbay. 

The self-directed tour began in Southport, with stops at the Liland and Jacobs homes. Participants then drove to the parking lot of the Carriage House in East Boothbay, where they were shuttled to Ocean Point for a tour of Beach Rose Cottage, the Taylor home, the Wilson Memorial Chapel and the Slayton home and gardens. A trip to Barter’s island to the Copeland/Womack home was the final stop.

Club members served as hosts and hostesses at each tour stop, and managed logistics and parking.    

The first home on the tour, owned by Dr. David Liland, is a post and beam New England home originally built by a sea captain. The surrounding gardens are gorgeous, and slope down toward Pierce Cove.

Kathy Jacobs and David Plane own the second home on the tour. The house was built in 1957, explained Plane, who once found a Civil War belt buckle on the property. The gardens are lovely, as are the huge cedar trees shading the property.

Beach Rose Cottage, owned by the Betts family, was the first stop at Ocean Point. The cottage was built in 1895 on the edge of Grimes Cove. Heron, Green, White and Fisherman’s, and Ram islands can be seen from the house. The gardens, carefully nurtured by the owners, are filled with a variety of flowers and beautiful Pink Dogwood trees. A pause by the beach roses lining the front of the house was rewarded by a heavenly combination of ocean and rose scents.

Down the shore path was the Taylor home, built in 1924. The backyard garden, intended, and tended, by the owners to be informal and colorful, is an almost hidden gem, with beautiful rock work and quirky touches, like an old claw tub.

Along the way was the stone-built Janet M. Wilson Memorial Chapel, built, then dedicated on Aug. 4, 1927, to the memory of Reverend Lewis G. Wilson’s wife. Services are held from late June through August.

The last stop in Ocean Point was to the Slayton Home on Seaton Point. Built in 1972 by Kathy Seaton, a teacher who left the home to the Slayton brothers, the house is now owned by Jeff and Barb Slayton, who expanded the home to house friends and family. In the home is a painted saying: “Near the sea, we forget to count the days.”

The tour wound up with a drive to the Copeland/Womack home on Barter’s Island. Completely renovated, the light and airy home features solar heat, which costs about $12.80 a month. Cedar chip paths lace through the property to the ocean.

Irene Gerny and Pat McMurry co-chaired the 2017 Boothbay Region Garden Club Home and Garden Committee. Sue Hochstein was in charge of organizing site hostesses; Jim Singer took care of parking logistics, Leslie Cook handled publicity and Jane Lunt produced the program.