A Healing Garden
A doctor's Boothbay garden -- inspired by her travels around the world -- became her own best therapy.
By Kim Ridley, photography by Brian Vanden Brink
D r. Elsie Freeman first visited the Boothbay area in the 1970s as a medical student helping a friend open her family's summer compound for the season. She fell in love with the view from the terrace of that home, where a 150-foot-long perennial border bloomed along a stonewall and fields rolled down to the shore. The century-old garden had been created by her friend's great-grandmother. "She was a formidable lady gardening in a black silk dress with a high collar and mutton sleeves, something to which I could only aspire," Freeman says, laughing.
