At a stage in life when most gardeners have packed their spades and trowels, 97-year-old Emily Rose tends to her plantings with passion and resolve. Just last year she added an orchard to Little Sutton, her 80-acre landscape in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. Emily insists that the genius of her hilltop sanctuary does not lie in exotic plant species or grandiosity of design. "You can ooh and aah over the grand estates," she says. "They are stunning, and I envy them. But it's not what we do here." Little Sutton is, in fact, a naturalistic landscape providing a quiet counterpoint to the rugged hills in the distance. Plantings are mostly native and heirloom varieties of perennials, trees, and shrubs.

Published: May 2007