If you're looking to garden this year but don't have space, why not rub shoulders with some of the area's history and adopt one of the raised beds at Rockingham. I was told at Communiversity that the Stonybrook Garden Club is no longer tending to the gardens, and Rockingham has decided to offer the individual beds to willing volunteers in the community.
They may still have a bed or two available. These are photos from a previous post about the place. George Washington stayed there while the U.S. government was briefly based at Nassau Hall in Princeton. The story goes that he rode his horse into town on what is now Mt. Lucas Road. There was a small quarry on the property back then, and the house has been moved three times since, because of all the highly marketable trap rock they kept finding underneath it.
Staff say that the house is now safely in a spot where it will not be disturbed again. They've added an orchard and just finished installing a barn, which they plan to use for hosting events.
The house is just outside Kingston, perched above the Millstone Valley. Might be a good destination for a bike ride down the DR Canal towpath.
What I remember most vividly from my visit there, for some reason, was the thorns on the hawthorn trees, which in Washington's day were used for pins in clothing. People wore nature back then.
Contact for the Friends Group for Rockingham is 683-7132, and rockingham.net.
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