Quick Picks

by John Burk

Two acclaimed museums showcase the diverse landscape history of North Central Massachusetts.

Fruitlands Museum

Encompassing more than two hundred acres on a picturesque hilltop in Harvard, Fruitlands Museum at 102 Prospect Hill Road offers a variety of collections related to art, nature, and history. Originally established in 1843 as a Transcendentalist community, Fruitlands opened to the public in 1914.

Visitors can tour the original farmhouse, explore the nation’s first Shaker museum, and view nineteenth-century landscape paintings and works by Native Americans at the Four Seasons and Seasonal galleries. Other amenities include a visitor center, restaurant, shop, educational facilities, and more than two miles of walking trails. Fruitlands has outstanding views of the Nashua River Valley, Wachusett Mountain, Mount Monadnock, and Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge.

Open April to November 10 a.m.to 4 p.m. Thursday to Sunday; trails open year-round.

Fisher Museum

Fisher Museum at Harvard Forest at 324 North Main Street (Route 32) in Petersham features twenty-three intricately crafted dioramas that depict landscape history, forest management practices, and conservation issues. Seven historical models show the remarkable changes that occurred after early settlers cleared the region’s forests. Recent additions include displays about Indigenous peoples developed in partnership with the Nipmuc tribe, and Harvard Forest research sites.

Two interpretive trails offer insights into ecology, forest history, natural communities, and Native American perspectives.

Open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays year round; 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends from May to November; trails open year-round.
(978) 724-3302

New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill

For spectacular spring color, it’s hard to beat the New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill in Boylston. Beautifully landscaped gardens come alive with blooms of tulips, irises, bluebells, and other perennials and annuals as well as striking cherry, magnolia, and apple trees. One of the most popular attractions, the stunning Field of Daffodils showcases more than twenty-five thousand daffodils on a sunlit slope.

Native wildflowers such as trilliums and pink lady’s slippers thrive in surrounding woodland habitats. During summer, enjoy displays of hydrangeas, peonies, roses, lilies, and sunflowers.

Explore trails and paths to a hilltop with views of Wachusett Mountain and Wachusett Reservoir, a wildlife pond, and a shade garden.

Stoddard Education and Visitors Center houses two indoor conservancies with plants from subtropical regions, a cafe, giftshop, and spaces for plant shows, exhibitions, workshops, and events to inspire your garden plans.

Maple Syrup

A visit at a local sugarhouse offers the experience of maple syrup season, an iconic tradition of New England. When winter transitions to spring in late February and March, producers begin their annual harvest of sap from sugar maples. Each taphole in a tree yields roughly ten gallons during the season, which usually lasts from four to six weeks. Healthy sugar maples can provide sap for more than a hundred years.

Utilizing evaporators, sugarhouses produce thick maple syrup from raw sap. It takes forty gallons of sap to make just one gallon of syrup, but the result is a delectable treat used as a topping for pancakes and waffles and an ingredient fora variety of dishes. The region’s largest operation, Hollis Hill Farm in Fitchburg makes approximately seventy thousand gallons of syrup processed from five thousand taps annually.

Here’s a list of maple producers in the region.

See the Massachusetts Maple Producers Association website, massmaple.org, for more information.