>> NARRATOR: Coming up on Weekends with Yankee... >> Gardens like this are just really important for feeding your soul, really.

>> AMY TRAVERSO: Mm-hmm.

>> NARRATOR: Amy is in Boylston, Massachusetts, touring a sprawling botanic garden and enjoying the beauty of late fall.

>> You have to know what to look for.

>> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> The aesthetic details in a winter garden in New England are subtle.

>> NARRATOR: Next, we're in Scarborough, Maine, where two childhood friends are creating a uniquely Maine wine.

>> You can only make wild blueberry sparkling wine from here, from Maine.

>> NARRATOR: And then Richard is in Woodstock, New Hampshire, exploring a magical winter wonderland.

>> WIESE: How does it feel to be an ice queen?

>> Great.

(laughs) I think I was made for it.

>> NARRATOR: Back at her home kitchen, Amy is transforming Maine blueberries into a delicious treat for the whole family.

>> The blueberry flavor is really there, and then that streusel topping, it just makes it so perfect.

>> NARRATOR: So come along for a once-in-a-lifetime journey through New England as you've never experienced it before.

A true insider's guide from the editors of Yankee magazine.

Join explorer and adventurer Richard Wiese and his co-host, Yankee senior food editor Amy Traverso, for behind-the-scenes access to the unique attractions that define this region.

It's the ultimate travel guide from the people who know it best.

Weekends With Yankee.

>> Major funding provided by... ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> The Vermont Country Store, the purveyors of the practical and hard-to-find since 1946.

♪ ♪ >> TRAVERSO: Today I'm in Worcester County, Massachusetts, just east of the city of Worcester.

This is a really undiscovered gem of an area, it's very hilly.

It's dotted with apple orchards, and it's lined with beautiful stone walls.

And right here is the crown jewel.

It's the Tower Hill Botanic Garden.

It is 171 acres of ornamental and native plants, and it's a gardener's dream.

I'm here in November, which is not peak gardening season.

The leaves have come down, the summer blooms are gone, but I wanted to come because I want to discover the beauty of this time of year.

We often think the party's over in November, but I'm going to take a tour of the woods here and see what beautiful things are growing.

And then we're going to go inside to the conservatory to see some beautiful plants in full bloom, which is just what we need.

♪ ♪ Well, this is pretty, So I'm looking around at this forest and the leaves have come down.

We're in what we call stick season, and I think a lot of people assume that once that's over, once the foliage is gone, there's, like, nothing to see here.

So why did you bring me to this spot?

>> Well, I brought you here because this is the inner park, and this is our native plant garden.

I love native plants, there's some really beautiful ones.

Especially growing up in New England, you do have to appreciate all four seasons.

>> TRAVERSO: Mm-hmm.

>> Um, and a lot of our native plants are beautiful straight through the winter.

♪ ♪ You have to know what to look for.

>> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> A lot of times, and a lot of the aesthetic details that you might see in a winter garden in New England are subtle.

So we're coming up upon a grove of rhododendron maximum.

>> TRAVERSO: Uh-huh.

>> Which is a fantastic evergreen native shrub; you can see today it's pretty cold out.

>> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> And the leaves are curling up and sort of drooping down a bit because the shrub knows that it's cold, and it's trying to protect its stomata on the underside of the leaf.

>> TRAVERSO: Oh, okay.

>> So in the really cold weather it sort of curls up like this.

>> TRAVERSO: Uh-huh.

>> Just to sort of limit how much water escapes the leaves.

>> TRAVERSO: They like this kind of-- I'm seeing pine trees, and my sense is they like that acidic soil in, uh, in the forest.

>> Yeah.

I mean, most of our soils in at least this part of New England, are rather acid.

>> TRAVERSO: Mm-hmm.

>> So a pH below seven.

And that's what we have here in New England.

And so you might as well find plants that like to grow in it, basically.

I like to say in the summertime, people get distracted by all the color, all the flowers in the landscape.

But this time of the year, you can really start to see the shape of the land form.

We've got a lot of great topography in New England, you know, steep slopes.

>> TRAVERSO: Mm-hm.

And it's like that term "good bones."

You know, you're looking at a house like, this forest has really good bones, and now you can see them.

>> Yeah, they're also really great carbon sinks.

In terms of climate change, the forests in New England are really doing a lot to help mitigate the effects of carbon emissions.

A tree like this white oak behind us captures a ton of carbon every year and stores it in its trunk.

>> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> And so it's a really fantastic way to store carbon.

So what are some of the other beautiful plants that we could look for at this time of year?

>> Yeah, so one of my favorites is this native witch hazel.

>> TRAVERSO: Oh, look at that, it's actually blooming!

>> It is, yeah.

>> TRAVERSO: Whoa, I didn't think anything was blooming right now.

>> Yup, we still have some flowers out there, but this is Hamamelis virginiana.

It's our native witch hazel, and the petals are a little shriveled up today because it's so cold.

But it's one of the last plants in New England, at least in our native flora, to bloom.

>> TRAVERSO: Now is that... that's not wintergreen-- >> It is.

>> TRAVERSO: It is?

>> Yeah, that's wintergreen.

>> TRAVERSO: Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.

I identified a plant, hooray!

(laughs) Yeah so this is Gaultheria procumbens.

It's a little native wintergreen, you can see the fruit right there.

>> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> It's very tasty.

>> TRAVERSO: So you can chew on the leaves, right?

>> You can chew on the leaves, you can chew on the fruit.

The fruit, really?

>> Yup.

>> TRAVERSO: It's not... because I see a red berry and I think, "Uh-oh."

>> I know, I know.

>> TRAVERSO: All right, I'm gonna do it.

>> I have to do that with my three-year-old, so.

>> TRAVERSO: Mmm... oh, it's good.

>> Good.

>> TRAVERSO: It tastes like winter green gum.

And it's a little bit sweet.

>> Yeah.

>> TRAVERSO: Yum, whoa.

♪ ♪ Oh, what's this?

>> Well, we've got a few overgrown shrubs over here.

>> TRAVERSO: Okay.

>> Um, so in this area, we have a lot of high bush blueberries.

>> TRAVERSO: Blueberry-- really?

>> Yeah, these are blueberries.

>> TRAVERSO: Aw.

>> Blueberry is a great native shrub, so we want to try to reduce them in size, and encourage more flowers and more fruit.

>> TRAVERSO: Okay.

>> But they get pretty large, so high bush blueberries can get, you know, 12, 15 feet tall.

>> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> And our goal for this one is to really keep it quite a bit smaller than that.

And this is the almost ideal time of year to start pruning a deciduous shrub like this.

>> TRAVERSO: So is there a rule of thumb of what you prune in the spring versus what you prune in the fall?

>> The rule of thumb that I generally try to tell people is the best time to prune is immediately after flowering and fruiting has happened because you're less likely to cut off next year's flower buds.

So I brought a set of tools for you and so you've got a folding saw... >> TRAVERSO: Mm-hmm.

>> And a pair of pruners.

We're gonna take this off completely, So I figured I'll make a quick cut on that so you can see, you know, how easy that is to remove a piece about that size with these Felcos.

Um, we get a little bit bigger than a half-inch to three-quarters of an inch, we're gonna switch to our folding saw.

>> TRAVERSO: Mm-hm.

>> So this is our folding saw, it's got nice, sharp teeth, and I'm gonna use this to cut anything that's about this size.

>> TRAVERSO: Okay.

>> Now, one technique that's really important is three-way cut.

You first start by making an undercut.

This is the best way to protect, um, the bark of a tree if you're pruning off a large limb.

So we make that undercut, then we make our big pruning cut just beyond that undercut.

>> TRAVERSO: So just up the branch.

>>> And you notice that the base of this there's a small tear... >> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> Uh, in the bark.

Oftentimes, if you're cutting a heavy limb, that tear will continue down.

>> TRAVERSO: To the place where you... >> This undercut-- right.

That undercut is meant to prevent that tear from going any farther, right?

>> TRAVERSO: Right, right.

And then we would make our final cut back on the inside of that undercut that we first made.

So it's just a good technique for preserving the bark... >> TRAVERSO: Right.

>> And making sure we get a nice, clean final cut.

And then I think we're gonna cut this one off here.

>> TRAVERSO: Okay, you want me to have a go at this one?

>> This damaged one here, that'll warm you up.

>> TRAVERSO: Yeah, it's helping with the chilly temperatures for sure.

My arm is starting to get tired.

(laughs) Okay, I feel it-- there we go.

>> There we go.

That was a clean cut.

>> Excellent.

>> So now the shape of this is much, you know, much better.

It's really where I want it to be.

I'd still come back through and cut a lot of the dead wood out.

>> TRAVERSO: Mm-hmm.

>> But it's definitely, you know, from an ornamental perspective, it's definitely a lot better than when we started.

>> TRAVERSO: So what inspires your work here?

>> Uh, you know, I really...

I've been in horticulture for a really long time.

And what really excites me is seeing people's excitement, seeing people really respond to our garden and the work that we're doing, teaching people about plants and why they're important in our daily lives, those are all things that are really important to me.

Whether it's enjoyment because they're-they're beautiful, whether it's food, because we all need to eat, or whether, you know, right now, it's-it's a challenging time to live.

And, you know, what we've seen this year at Tower Hill is that a lot of people are seeking out places like this, that they're really trying to get that connection with the natural world that they're trying to enjoy, you know, just the basics of, of, of humanity by coming to a place like this where they can really get that connection with the natural world around them.

And so gardens like this are just really important for, for feeding your soul, really, is what it comes down to.

>> TRAVERSO: Mm-hmm, yeah.

I see that.

Yeah.

I totally share that sense of gardens being kind of the place to go to, especially during challenging times.

And I'd love to actually see a little bit more of the garden, so can we head back up?

>> Yeah, that'd be great.

>> TRAVERSO: Okay, good.

♪ ♪ Wow, this is a beautiful space.

♪ ♪ You know, Robert, I....

I came here in part to kind of reorient myself around November, to see the beauty of November after the leaves come down and Mark really did a great job of showing me the beauty of the forest when you know where to look.

But sometimes you just want to see some beautiful, green greenery and flowers, and this feels like a really welcome break from winter.

>> Yeah, this is one of two conservatories here at Tower Hill Botanic Garden, and inside you'll find subtropical plants, all different colors, textures, blooms, all season... >> TRAVERSO: Yes, flowers!

>> In the bleak midwinter, this is a really valuable place to escape to.

>> TRAVERSO: Is there a long history of these kinds of indoor gardens and conservatories?

And I remember reading about orangeries.

>> Glass houses are really important to gardeners because you can bring in your plants from their summer spots and put them in their winter homes, and you can grow things that you wouldn't be able to otherwise grow here in New England >> TRAVERSO: Right.

Now what's the history of the Tower Hill Botanical Gardens, and how did it come about?

>> If you can believe it, it was only 35 years ago when this was just a farmland.

And in that short amount of time, everything that you've seen on your visit here has been built here-- so formal gardens, these two conservatories, a visitors center.

It's pretty impressive.

>> TRAVERSO: Yeah, and people are really embracing gardening now.

It seems like it's, um...

It's a hobby a lot of people are taking up.

>> We've been seeing higher visitation than we ever have in our history.

It's really, um, fulfilling to work in such an environment where people need connections with nature, they need connections with plants.

And in the world we live in today, there's no better place to come than a botanic garden.

>> TRAVERSO: I really appreciate being able to come here today at this time of year to kind of reconnect with the beauty of the forest at this time of year, even though it's not peak foliage.

And then to be able to kind of come into this warm room and see all this gorgeous green and flowers, it's just-- it's so restorative, and it's like you can feel your sort of soul go like "Ah..." (laughs) And I like that.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: One of the most innovative wines in the market isn't coming from Napa Valley or the Italian countryside.

It's coming from Scarborough, Maine, >> In the winemaking industry in California, we look at anything that's not one of the Noble varieties-- cabernet, chardonnay, pinot noir, as an attempt to imitate the greats.

And therefore, why bother?

What we've learned making wild blueberry wine is that we're not making something imitative, we're making something wholly unique.

♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Childhood friends Eric Martin and Michael Terrien grew up near Portland, Maine.

In their early 20s, they both moved to California, where Eric pursued a writing career and Michael discovered winemaking, learning the intricacies of producing chardonnay and pinot noir in Napa.

True Mainers at heart, they frequently made trips back to their home state, where they got to thinking about their favorite local fruit.

>> We're always messing around in Maine.

We're here in the summers, and we're on a bachelor party trip drinking our last bottle of alcohol, which was a bottle of kind of sweet blueberry wine.

And Michael is looking at it, and he's like "Wild blueberries are so good, "there's gotta be a better way.

"You've got to be able to make a wine that's more honest, that's more reflective of blueberries than this."

So those things come together to us getting bored in middle age and instead of the sports cars and the girlfriends we're like, "Let's like start making some... let's go off and run off together a few times a year and make blueberry wine.

♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: And that was the start of Bluet.

Wild Maine blueberries are much smaller and have a more complex flavor than their cultivated high bush cousins, and are chock full of antioxidants.

>> As a winemaker, making cabernet and chardonnay and pinot noir, then approaching wild blueberries, the one thing that really is remarkably different is the antioxidant capacity of wild blueberries.

It's just off the chart; I mean, it's a superfood.

>> NARRATOR: Michael and Eric are preserving the essence of this fruit in their dry, sparkling wine.

>> You can only make wild blueberry sparkling wine from here, from Maine.

♪ ♪ You think of pinot noir as this extraordinary wine-- and it is.

It's gone through a millennium of a dance between humans and that DNA, and then transported from a hillside in Burgundy across a continent, across an ocean, across another continent.

These things are what we do in order to elicit this extraordinary flavor from pinot noir in California or Willamette.

And that's cool!

What is insanely cool about this fruit is that it has not moved in 10,000 years.

It started 10,000 years ago right here, and all we're doing is lifting it off the ground, seeing what the flavor differences are by turning it into a wine without doing anything, aside from letting it ferment and putting into a bottle and having a secondary fermentation.

♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: They also saw this venture as a way to expand and sustain the Maine blueberry market.

>> This farm has been in the family for generations.

I'm the seventh generation, and we've been commercially harvesting blueberries for over 150 years.

The wild blueberry, it's available fresh for two or three weeks out of the year, and that's it.

You have a short window.

They freeze incredibly well.

So the frozen wild Maine blueberries are perfect for year-round consumption.

But the value added is really where we need to go just to make sure that the farm keeps going for future generations.

So to be able to work with Michael and Eric, develop their very exciting, value added product, it means a lot to us.

>> We're in Appleton, Maine.

I run a wild blueberry receiving station.

We're actually the biggest grower of certified organic wild blueberries in the state of Maine now, which makes us the biggest in the United States.

There's been several outfits in Maine that have attempted to make wild blueberry wine.

Michael tried a wild blueberry wine and thought that he could do better.

Well, I tried Michael's wine, and I think he's succeeded.

>> NARRATOR: Michael and Eric hope this is just the beginning of the blueberry wine industry in Maine.

♪ ♪ >> What we'd really love to see is... is many, many people making wild blueberry wine.

>> We have that big dream of creating this ecosystem that could lead to something that would be much bigger than us or much bigger than Bluet.

Maybe that could change the game for the wild blueberry growers, it could help the Maine economy, and lead to all sorts of fascinating stuff in the beverage world.

That's the big dream, and we realize it's a little crazy, but we kind of believe it.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: As temperatures drop in the White Mountains, a winter wonderland springs to life.

♪ ♪ Spanning one acre, and composed of over 200 million pounds of ice, this chilly fortress reaches points of up to 30 feet tall.

♪ ♪ Although it appears straight out of a fairy tale, it requires around 8,000 hours of manpower and hundreds of thousands of handcrafted icicles.

♪ ♪ The brainchild of Brent Christianson, this interactive art exhibit, called Ice Castles, had humble beginnings.

In 2009, Christiansen built his first ice castle in his front yard to entertain his six kids in the cold winter months.

And it was a hit with the entire neighborhood.

Since then, this winter attraction has grown exponentially, drawing hundreds of thousands of families in a normal year, with four locations spread across the U.S.

The New Hampshire location is the only one that has additional interactive elements, including a mystic forest light walk, sleigh rides, and a tubing hill.

>> WIESE: The sun has set here in North Woodstock, New Hampshire.

Let's check it out.

♪ ♪ This has just such a magical feel to it.

>> There's some people that come here, walk around and assume that it was done by magic.

♪ ♪ >> WIESE: How does it feel being ice queen?

>> (laughs) Great, I think I was made for it.

>> NARRATOR: Aisling Petipas is an artist based in Bristol, New Hampshire.

She focuses primarily on painting and garden design, but every winter since 2016, she's crafted thrones, towers, and tunnels out of ice.

>> We harvest our icicles that we grow here, we pick them, and then we place them wherever we want the ice to grow.

We have a sprinkler system that runs throughout this whole castle.

We turn it on, and overnight those icicles will get stronger.

♪ ♪ >> WIESE: What's your favorite thing that's being built right now?

>> (laughs) My tree.

>> WIESE: Your tree!

>> So I'm growing it to have a spiral staircase where I can get up there and walk around.

These icicles that I placed last night, that'll be the next level of the spiral.

♪ ♪ We get all sorts of wacky questions.

People kind of come over and they're like, "Oh, that's how you build the castle."

And it's like, "No, no, I'm actually not building."

I'm just shoveling some snow right now."

♪ ♪ >> WIESE: Yeah, this is beautiful.

>> Really, congratulations, you guys.

this is something that just takes your breath away when you walk through here.

>> Right, well, you couldn't have it if people didn't come.

So I'm happy that people come to enjoy it.

>> WIESE: Yes, it's wonderful.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> TRAVERSO: So blueberry wine made in the style of champagne may not be something you're familiar with, but I'm gonna be making a blueberry dessert that is very cozy and may be familiar to you.

It's called blueberry buckle, and it's in that family of cobblers and crisps and betties.

And a buckle is a fruit cake that's topped with a crumble topping.

So our first step is we're gonna put four tablespoons of unsalted butter and three-quarters of a cup of sugar in a bowl.

So the butter is softened and that's to allow it to mix better.

It also will incorporate a little bit of air as we mix it, which will help the cake have a better texture.

My butter and sugar have been mixing for about three minutes, and they're getting fluffier, and so now I'm gonna add one egg, which I also have at room temperature.

♪ ♪ So my mixture is nice and pale and fluffy, so now it's time to mix the dry ingredients.

Here I have two cups of flour.

I'm gonna put this in a bowl.

I'm going to add two teaspoons of baking powder and a half-teaspoon of salt.

Now I just whisk this together.

You'll see, this cake is so easy.

If you have never made a cake before, make this cake.

So to finish the mixing of the cake, I'm going to be adding milk and the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, and I'm going to alternate them.

♪ ♪ And lastly, I have some frozen Maine wild blueberries.

I really like Maine wild blueberries, as opposed to regular high bush blueberries because they have a nice size for this cake, and they have a really nice, intense flavor.

It's okay if they're still frozen.

These are actually still frozen, and they'll thaw when they are baking.

And then I just mix the blueberries in by hand until they're evenly distributed.

So now this batter goes into a cake pan that I have greased with some butter, and it'll just spread this out-- it's pretty thick.

It doesn't have to be perfect, because as it heats up in the oven, it'll just spread out by itself, but kind of get a roughly smooth shape.

♪ ♪ So, like a crisp, a buckle has a streusel topping, and this is a very simple one that just starts out with half a cup each of sugar and flour.

And then we finish it up with a little bit of butter, four tablespoons.

Some cinnamon... and a tiny bit of salt, and eighth of a teaspoon.

Now I'm gonna use my pastry cutter to just work the butter into the other ingredients until it looks crumbly.

And the final step is we just pour this streusel topping over the cake.

And just to even it out and level it, I'm just gonna bang it on the counter a couple times.

And now this goes into a 375 degree oven until a cake tester comes out clean, which is about 40 minutes.

My blueberry buckle is done.

I really love the way it looks.

I baked it until the top was just turning golden brown.

I love how the blueberries are distributed throughout the cake, and that's from the hand mixing.

Has a nice rise to it, and a really nice texture.

Going to take a little bite here.

♪ ♪ Mmm...

The blueberry flavor is really there.

And then that, that streusel topping, it just, it just makes it so perfect.

I mean, what's better than a streusel topping?

Just that hint of cinnamon is perfect.

♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: For exclusive video, recipes, travel ideas, tips from the editors, and access to the Weekends With Yankee digital magazine, go to weekendswithyankee.com and follow us on social media, @yankeemagazine.

Yankee magazine, the inspiration for the television series, provides recipes, feature articles, and the best of New England from the people who know it best.

Six issues for $10.

Call 1-800-221-8154. Credit cards accepted.

>> Major funding provided by... ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> The Vermont Country Store, the purveyors of the practical and hard-to-find since 1946.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪