“Science, beauty, and importance of the plant kingdom.” The three-stemmed mission of Smith College’s botanic garden is nearly a fairy tale plot: brainy babe meets wild royalty. Its grounds were planned, along with the rest of campus, by Frederick Olmsted, who aimed for Smith to exemplify scientific as well as aesthetic value. While primarily known as a liberal arts school, Smith was the first women's college to offer undergraduate degrees in engineering, and botany has bloomed on syllabi since classes began in 1875.

Today the botanic garden holds 6,600 international plants, half of which steam and flourish in the Lyman Conservatory. There’s a pleasing poetic resonance to their classifications: hardy, woody, tender, tropical, desert, marsh. We wander milky glass houses that smell like fresh hot rain, ducking under vines.

Orchids radiate glamorous wickedness, all fangs and jewel-tone feelers. The succulent tables bubble with aquatic green greys and a zoo of names like burro's tail and whale's tongue. Palms regally shade furry heliconia from South America and staghorn ferns with prehistoric roots. It’s a chlorophyll gorge, a dizzying indulgence of fronds and leaves with Latin names. We recommend walking the fragrant rows for at least an hour indoors and out.

A ten-minute drive from Northampton are more crops with intriguing labels. Rows of new vines are trellised on metal wire. French varietals like traminette and noiret neighbor German riesling and grüner veltliner—all surrounded by fields of corn and soy. On 12 acres of land in the Pioneer Valley, Black Birch Vineyard presses their own grapes with fruit from the colder, limestone driven soil of the Finger Lakes. Vintners and married couple Ian Modestow and Michelle Kersbergen make focused small-batch reds; their well-rounded cabernet sauvignon is a spritz of eucalyptus and bell pepper with damp dirt on the nose. After greenhouse humidity, a herbaceous wine refreshes like water.

7/27/2019