Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens will be one of the garden venues featured in the 2020 Forever stamp series from the U.S. Postal Service titled American Gardens. (Image courtesy David P. Coleman/U.S. Postal Service)
Representing the beauty of Maine: Lovely Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, in Boothbay, has been honored for its breathtaking beauty by being chosen by the U.S. Postal Service as one of the 10 garden venues nationwide to be featured in its 2020 American Gardens series of first-class Forever stamps.
“With this issuance, the Postal Service celebrates the beauty of American gardens,” said a press release sent to Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens by U.S. Postal Service Stamp Development Specialist Claudia Daniels. “This pane of 20 stamps features 10 different photographs of botanic, country estate, and municipal gardens, taken between 1996 and 2014. The gardens include: Biltmore Estate Gardens (North Carolina), Brooklyn Botanic Garden (New York), Chicago Botanic Garden (Illinois), Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (Maine), Dumbarton Oaks Garden (District of Columbia), The Huntington Botanical Gardens (California), Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park (Florida), Norfolk Botanical Garden (Virginia), Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens (Ohio), and Winterthur Garden (Delaware). Art director Ethel Kessler designed the stamps with existing photos taken by Allen Rokach.”
The announcement by Daniels is part of a recent unveiling by the U.S. Postal Service of a number of new stamps being rolled out in next year’s Forever stamp program, including a Lunar New Year: Year of the Rat series, an Earth Day stamp, a Hip Hop series, and the Maine Statehood stamp, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Maine’s statehood and featuring the Edward Hopper painting “Sea at Ogunquit.”
“Certainly, we’re very excited about it and we’re very honored,” Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens Director of Marketing and Communications Kris Folsom told me by phone regarding the venue’s inclusion in the American Gardens stamp series.
Congratulations to Folsom and to everyone else that makes Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens the beautiful, popular place that it is. Well done!
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is online at mainegardens.org. Watch for Gardens Aglow – that wonderful, colorful, must-see holiday light display — which started up Thursday, Nov. 14. Gardens Aglow runs through Dec. 31. Call 633-8000 for more information.
“Gardens and flowers have a way of bringing people together, drawing them from their homes.” – Clare Ansberry, “The Women of Troy Hill: The Back-Fence Virtues of Faith and Friendship”
“I must have flowers, always, and always.” – Claude Monet
(Christine LaPado-Breglia is an award-winning journalist who has written about the arts in both California and Maine. Email her at clbreglia@lcnme.com or write her a letter in care of The Lincoln County News, P.O. Box 36, Damariscotta, ME 04543.)
