The Farmhand: News from Sanborn Mills Farm

Sunday, July 28, 2019

10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Demonstrations of blacksmithing, grist milling, wood planing and milling.

Draft horses and oxen, gardens, food from the Common Man, and live music!

Free admission.

D
onations to further the mission of Sanborn Mills Farm gratefully accepted.

As the mills will be running and some construction at the Farm is ongoing, children under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult at all times.

Sanborn Mills Farm

7097 Sanborn Road

Loudon, N.H. 03307

(603) 435-7314

A section of the alpine garden at Sanborn Mill Farm. These “small and huggy” plants, in Michelle Smith’s description, naturally grow in some of the harshest environments on Earth. 

“Who knows why a certain type of plant turns out to have such irresistible appeal to an individual?” Frank Cabot wrote in
The Greater Perfection, his book about the beautiful gardens at the Les Quatre Vents (“the four winds) estate in Quebec. “In my case alpine plants were the hook that dragged me from a normal existence into a lifelong involvement with, and attachment to, plants.” 

The leg
acy of love for alpine plants that Frank left lives on today at Sanborn Mills Farm, where three years ago an alpine garden was begun under the direction of Frank’s son, Colin Cabot, and Colin’s wife Paula. In fact, one of the first plants planted in the Sanborn alpine garden, a Dianthus, came from Les Quatre Vents.

Bill Noble, who helped develop the Sanborn garden, remembers that the original plantings in the th
ree raised rock garden beds on the west side of the Main House “did not take full advantage of the beauty of the way the walls were constructed and the nooks they created for close viewing of special plants.  Colin, Paula, and I saw that the beds could be more interesting if they were planted with rock garden and alpine plants, whose delicate features could be enjoyed at a comfortable viewing height.” 

Today the Dianthus is surrounded by several other varieties of alpine vegetation, including rock garden shrubs and perennials, as well as a few bulbs. Bill notes that plants that have done the best in the garden include 
saxifrages, primulas, aethionema, dianthus, and dwarf rhododendron. The three-section garden is protected from wind and too much sunlight, and the lower-level location makes maintenance as well as viewing much easier.

Michelle Smith, who oversees the ornamental and herb gardens at Sanborn Mills Farm, says she loves the way these plants stay small and hug the ground for protection against harsh mountain elements, yet when they bloom the flowers show off a colorful beauty as gorgeously vivid as any greenhouse flower. 

Some of these plan
ts are native to the above-treeline alpine ridges and summits of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, others come from alpine regions in Europe and Asia. All of them grow with the miniature, complex beauty that’s shared by bonsai gardens. It seems as if each plant holds an entire world. 

”
The thing I like most about alpine/rock garden plants is that many of them are evergreen or ever-silver and show well in the garden in all seasons of the year,” says Bill. “The flowering is brief and intense, and always welcome, but what I treasure is the shape of the plants and the way they hug the rocks and pea stone. They stir the imagination to think about those alpine places of the world that may be hard to reach in reality but can be visited in the imagination.”