More Trips Nixed
June 9th, 2020
Three more garden trips that I was going to lead this year through Lowee’s Group Tours are now off, victims of the lingering coronavirus pandemic and the uncertainties it’s brought.
We’ll have to wait another year to visit the Abels’ Lancaster County Pheasant Run Farm.
Both of our June day trips – the June 18 trip to the new Delaware Botanic Gardens and Mt. Cuba Center and the June 19 trip to two Lancaster County home gardens and two Lancaster County plant shops – won’t be happening.
Neither will our “big trip” of 2020 – the planned 17-day gardener’s bucket-list vacation to Australia and New Zealand with an optional four-day stay on the Fiji Islands on the way back.
The good news is that we’re going to reschedule all three of those trips in 2021.
We’re looking at Mon., May 17, 2021, for the Lancaster County trip, which includes visits to the 1-acre, no-lawn “Gardens of Oz” of Dr. Dennis Denenberg near Manheim, the colorful grounds of Vivian and Bob Abel’s Pheasant Run Farm Bed and Breakfast in the serene Lancaster County countryside, and shopping visits to two of my favorite bargain-priced Lancaster County plant haunts – Black Creek Greenhouses (annuals/perennials) and Conestoga Nursery (trees/shrubs).
For the trip to the two Delaware gardens – neither of which has reopened yet this year (Mt. Cuba is opening June 17) – we’re looking at next June 25, which is a Friday.
And for the Australia/New Zealand trip, which is being operated jointly by Lowee’s Group Tours and Collette Vacations, we’re looking at moving that one to Oct. 3 through 19 of 2021. The plan is to keep the same itinerary, just a year later.
Last month, we postponed another trip that was to go out May 2-9. That one was to visit great gardens of Niagara and Toronto, Canada, with a day at the Rochester Lilac Festival on the way back. It’s been rescheduled for May 8-15, 2021.
Tentative details on each of the rescheduled trips are listed on my Talks and Trips page.
Additional information and bookings are available by calling Lowee’s Group Tours at 717-657-9658 or toll-free 1-888-345-6933 or by emailing CKelly@Lowees.com.
As of now, we’re still planning to do the rest of our 2021 trips:
One of the many nice views at Wave Hill.
* A July 24 day trip to New York’s Wave Hill and to Untermyer Gardens along the Hudson River in Yonkers.
* An Aug. 20 day trip to Philadelphia’s Morris Arboretum and Shofuso Japanese House and Gardens.
* A nine-day tour of gardens of the Midwest (St. Louis, Nashville, and Louisville) from Sept. 10 to 18.
* A day trip “Holiday with the du Ponts” that includes visits to Hagley Museum, Winterthur, and Longwood Gardens” on Dec. 7.
* And a four-day holiday trip to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., along with stops at Stowe Gardens, Christmas Town U.S.A., and the National Gingerbread House Competition, from Dec. 8 to 11.
More details on each of those also are listed on my Talks and Trips page.
While we were rescheduling the 2020 cancels, we started pondering other venues for 2021, when we’re hoping coronavirus will just be a bad memory.
Some possibilities include a Cherry Blossom Cruise and U.S. Arboretum tour to D.C. in early April, a three-day tour of some of the best gardens of New York’s Hudson Valley (Boscobel, Stonecrop, and Kykuit) in June, a return to Garden Walk Buffalo the last weekend in July (an annual tour that’s been canceled this year), a day trip to Thomas Jefferon’s Monticello and his little-known Tufton Farm in August, a five-day tour of some of North Carolina’s top gardens in early September, a “mystery trip” in October, and a Christmas trip to the mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, next December.
If you have ideas on some places you’d like to see, let me know by emailing george@georgeweigel.net. Your input is one way we pick destinations.
Stay tuned for more on the 2021 trips… and hopefully no more news of cancellations this year.