REHOBOTH - The surface of the pond catches flowering shrubs, hemlock boughs, and marsh-loving irises, blurring their shapes in reflection. From a bench shaded by a high, leafy canopy, the view has the quality of a dream. This contemplative setting invites visitors to drop into a seat and gaze - yet it lies within a commercial nursery, Tranquil Lake, in Rehoboth. What visitors are gazing at is the nursery’s display garden - one that shows off plants grown and sold here, to demonstrate how customers can use these locally grown beauties at home. Not every nursery has such a garden, but several throughout New England have examples dazzling enough to warrant a trip. Nurseries that are worthy destinations often specialize in unusual and hard-to-find plants - garnet-coned spruce trees or roses shorn into topiary spirals- so their stock is often pricier than plants grown for mass consumption. Such is the price of rare beauty. For those who don’t know a peony from a petunia, these are lovely places to stroll, sit, and perhaps, to dream.
Where to find (or start) the garden of your dreams
ALLEN C. HASKELL HORTICULTURISTS, New Bedford This nursery, founded in 1953, is a six-acre paradise tucked into a residential neighborhood. The place glows with the patina that graces the best old gardens. Mossy planters, rock walls draped in vines, old shade trees, and granite cobbles form an atmosphere of mystery created by the nursery’s founder, the late Allen Haskell, who won virtually every award in New England for horticulture and design, some several times. Today his family operates the business, which includes horticulture and landscape design as well as the nursery. After plying the greenhouses filled with topiary, lemon trees, roses, exotic geraniums, and bamboo - among many other species - visitors can ramble the paths that lead to an enchanted “forest’’ of exotic specimens, their root balls wrapped in burlap: conifers that weep, creep, or sprout chocolate-colored cones; Japanese maples with leaves that taper into Buddha-fingers or spread into serrated moons. 787 Shawmut Ave., 508-993-9047, haskellnursery.com, daily 8 a.m.-5 p.m., free
