Celebrate Spring
Janice Randall Rohlf
Editor
Mark Twain is often cited as saying, “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” The literary legend would have had a field day with this past winter’s crazy fluctuations in temperature and precipitation from one day to the next. I for one am looking forward to a more benevolent spring, a season that has its own set of challenges in this part of the country but which brings the promise of sunshine streaming through our windows and into our yards.
One way that we at New Hampshire Home are celebrating spring is with our 10th Annual Design Awards. We have brought the excitement of the April 20 live event into this issue and offer an ongoing round of applause to the winners. The fields of architecture, interior design, landscape design and construction are all exciting to watch, constantly simmering with ideas and innovations that pique our interest. So much so, in fact, that we added several new categories this year in order to do justice to these burgeoning fields. We trust it will be a treat for you to read about the award winners and admire their projects.
At the same time that practitioners of design are continually looking forward, they are also often looking back to be inspired by tradition. The National Trust for Historic Preservation designates May as Preservation Month, and this year’s theme is “People Saving Places,” which the trust says “will be a national high-five to everyone doing the great work of saving places—in ways big and small—and inspiring others to do the same.” The New Hampshire Preservation Alliance was one of the organizations recruited by The Portsmouth Advocates to advocate for Carey Cottage at Creek Farm, a Gilded-Age treasure that had fallen into disrepair. On page 36, read how a core team of eight individuals saved the building from demolition and restored it to its former glory.
Keeping tradition alive is important on a more intimate level, too. Two feature stories in this
issue (“Sister Act” and “An Elevated Experience”) have a common theme: the hallowed New Hampshire lakeside “camp.” In both instances, the original structures were beyond saving, but the new homes that replaced them carry on the spirit that underpinned their predecessors—making family memories within their four walls.
Our regular Garden Rx column, written by Robin Sweetser, is our way of acknowledging the state’s agricultural and horticultural heroes. In this issue, we meet Jo and Jack Shields, who not only tend a jewel-box flower garden, rich in color and texture, but also grow vegetables in a rooftop garden. It’s Yankee ingenuity at its best!
Wishing you all a happy and healthy spring,
