The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was a well kept Boston secret until 2012, when a multimillion dollar expansion by “starchitect” Renzo Piano shone a light on this singular jewel…which can also be said about it’s millionaire Bohemian namesake. Speaking of one who had it “her way” (cue Frank Sinatra) Isabella completed her 15th century-style Palazzo in 1901, devoting herself to personally arranging works of art on the first three floor galleries and continuing to acquire a treasure trove of several centuries of European masterpieces over the rest of her life.

But the focus for me has always been the interior courtyard that culminates in a glass-ceiling. As singular as Isabella (who resided on the 4th floor living quarters ) the plantings are changed almost every month, all set amid an array of lush ferns, shrubs, and palms…

displays that reflect Isabella’s passion for gardens as well as the skill and dedication of the Museum’s horticulture staff. From orchids to nasturtiums to Japanese-style chrysanthemums, there is always something new to discover thanks to the changing seasons and the rotation of plants. Most of the plants for the Courtyard are grown in the Museum’s temperature controlled nursery and trucked to the Palace location, where they are rotated in to keep the displays in peak condition.

But as a garden lover myself, I would be remiss if I did not point out another example of Isabella’s vision and passion for gardens. She chose to site her Museum on the edge of the newly built Back Bay Fens ( a part of Frederick Law Olmstead’s “Emerald Necklace”) because she saw the potential for this new landscape to enable, inform, and enhance the city of Boston. Today the museum continues to recognize the importance of landscape architecture through its landscape department, landscape lectures, and landscape exhibitions.

Gardens, both interior and exterior, are an integral part of the Gardener Museum experience today. When Isabella built the museum, she created a focus that was as much about flowers and plants, artfully arranged, as it was about masterpieces of art. The culmination of that vision is the Courtyard but botanical images can be found throughout the museum, also.

Of the countless plant species that rotate through the museum’s horticulturally endowed courtyard each year, the nasturtiums are arguably the headline act. Be sure to make a date to drop by in early April and be enchanted by these stars!

The flowering cascades are all the more impressive for the fact that this April event follows a tradition started in 1904 by Mrs. Gardner in celebration of her birthday and the opening of her Venetian-style palace to the public.

Saluting a woman of turn-of-the-century Boston…an heiress, visionary, and philanthropist, who has inspired two best selling books in just the last two years, Chasing Beauty and The Lioness of Boston. Treat yourself to a good read…