Tasmania, Australia: A Visit to MONA
Text and photos by Julie Moir Messervy. A year ago, my family and I traveled to Tasmania to visit the wonderful Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). Here’s an example of an innovator’s museum—where a wild and crazy collector, David Walsh, created a completely new version of what a museum can be. Opened in […]
JMMDS Residential Landscape Design: A Contemporary Home in Southern Vermont
By Julie Moir Messervy. Photos by Seamus Flynn Photography. Sitting high on a hill in the forested wilds of southern Vermont is a house unusual for its area. At first glance, it looks like a Japanese-style farmhouse from the north island of Hokkaido with its hewn timber frame, wooden windows, and deep eaves. Yet […]
Six Weeks in Australia, Part 2
Text and photos by Julie Moir Messervy. Plateau and escarpments caused by uplift 170 million years ago at the Blue Mountains National Park Valley of the Waters Naming a garden, landscape, or park so that it resonates as an image is an important part of what we do for our clients at JMMDS. I love […]
Changing My Point of View | Six Weeks in Australia
Text and photos by Julie Moir Messervy I’m very lucky. Over the past forty years, I’ve enjoyed a creative work life that allows me to do all the things I love. When my dear father died in August, I realized that it was time for a true break from my usual productivity. As I thought […]
Japanese Gardens On My Mind
By Julie Moir Messervy Japanese gardens have been back on my mind lately. Several years ago, the Museum of Fine Arts’ Tenshin-en was skillfully and elegantly renovated by my friend and colleague Shinichiro Abe’s firm, Zen Associates. Shin and I worked together in Professor Kinsaku Nakane’s office in Kyoto in 1976 (!), alongside his son, […]
Nine Days in Italy: Part 3—A Garden a Day
Text and photos by Julie Moir Messervy Editor’s note: We have long owed our readers the conclusion to Julie’s blog series about her Spring 2016 tour of Italian gardens! Here it is…a bit out of season, but who in the northern hemisphere doesn’t want to see sunny images of glorious gardens at this time of […]
Massachusetts Horticultural Society’s Elm Bank Celebrates 20 Years!
Text and photos by Julie Moir Messervy. On Thursday, June 2nd, Mass Hort put on a big soiree—The Twilight Garden Party—for 300 of its long-time supporters at Wellesley’s Elm Bank campus. Each of the twelve display gardens sparkled with beautiful plantings and immaculate maintenance. I got there a bit early to walk through Weezie’s […]
Nine Days in Italy II: The Sacred Grove of Bomarzo
Text and photos by Julie Moir Messervy. The Park of the Monsters at Bomarzo, located 60 miles northwest of Rome, is a must-see destination for all garden lovers. Also called the Villa of Wonders, it has been on my bucket list since I read Marella Agnelli’s wonderful Gardens of the Italian Villas (NY: Rizzoli, 1987); what joy to finally encounter […]
A Mercedes-Benz Dream Garden at The Kampong
Recently JMMDS had the pleasure of participating in the Junior League of Miami’s 2016 Showhouse fundraiser at The Kampong in Coconut Grove, which benefitted Miami’s women and children in need. The former home of Dr. David Fairchild, renowned horticulturalist and plant collector, and a National Tropical Botanical Garden dedicated to preserving tropical plant diversity, The Kampong is […]
Nine Days in Italy: Part I
Text and photos by Julie Moir Messervy. My husband and I just returned from a beautiful nine days in northern Italy, where we traveled through exquisite countryside to view gardens—nice work if you can get it! In fact, we saw one garden a day, sometimes two, and so lived up to my old adage that you should […]
