Fayal Greene’s large backyard, mostly shade garden in the hamlet of Claverack presented a buffer to the traffic outside the front door of her historic 1850 home. Still in the Claverack hamlet, the garden of Peter Bevacqua and Stephen King was perhaps the most polished—and witty—of the group. And out Mt. Merino Road in Greenport, the steeply pitched two-acre garden of Gerald Moore and Joyce Nereaux, overlooking the Hudson River, was perhaps the most dramatic.

Rain or shine, Open Day is a happy day for visitor and host alike, and this year the rain held off. Visitors in sensible sunhats took notes but weren’t too reverent to point out, “Well, they obviously don’t have any deer.” The garden hosts and their volunteers generously answered questions.

Old, young, or in between, each of the gardens is evolving—a gardener has to be able to say “next year”—and while certain plants and shrubs reoccurred from place to place—the oddly scented polygonus, for one, and pounds of hosta—each garden offered its own surprises and joys. A garden, I was reminded once again, involves not only hard work and dirt and aches and pains, but also trust and optimism and love—for the land, yes, and something more—for those who share the garden with you, whether family, friends, or strangers.

* Editor’s Note: Norman Posner’s button commemorated not twenty years of the garden but twenty years of the Hudson Bush Farm Sale and Plant Exchange, which Posner and his late partner Charles Baker began in 1989. The event was held every year at Hudson Bush Farm for ten years, after which it moved to the Clermont Historic Site and is now carried on by Friends of Clermont. The gardens at Hudson Bush Farm have been evolving for more than thirty years.