NORTHPORT — When Jordana and Ross Martin, two creatives from Brooklyn, New York, purchased their eight-acre oceanfront property in Northport in 2016, it was virtually a blank canvas on which to express their love of heirloom trees and Maine granite.
Highlights of the expansive coastal property today include a fruit orchard, a Japanese-style garden, granite curbing and steps, and artfully installed boulders. The public is invited to visit the Martins’ Midcoast Maine retreat at 132 Bayside Road Saturday, Aug. 19 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., rain or shine.
The Martin garden tour concludes the Belfast Garden Club’s 2023 Open Garden Days, a nine-week celebration of some of the area’s most scenic and creative gardens. Admission is $5.
Ross Martin is the founder and president of a national marketing agency; Jordana established and runs a textile arts organization. The couple, who have summered in the area for 15 years, were drawn to the Bayside Road lot by its population of almost 20 apple, crabapple and pear trees.
“Our decision to purchase this particular property was less about the house and more about the heirloom fruit trees,” says Jordana Martin. “Their idiosyncratic shapes and gestures never fail to delight us.”
They shortly planted 16 more fruit trees — including cherry, peach, plum and persimmon—in the meadow leading to the ocean. In 2019, they hired Yarmouth landscape architect Joshua Tompkins to help them begin articulating a vision for the grounds. Jordana herself has designed the subsequent additions.
When the pandemic kept the Martins in Maine year-round, they created a large garden of raised vegetable beds and generous plots of all-white flowers — peonies, poppies, dahlias and many more.
In 2022, the couple constructed their Japanese circle garden, which features walls, seating, Japanese maples and a variety of conifers. Jordana, who says “each piece of stone is a sculpture made by time,” traveled the state to find sources for granite and worked with Winter’s End Brick & Stonework in Hampden to fulfill her designs.
This spring, the Martins installed a natural dye garden, including weld, safflower and indigo plants among others.
For more information on the Belfast Garden Club and its programs, visit belfastgardenclub.org. Proceeds from Open Garden Days help support the club’s school programs, camp scholarships, library donations, and Belfast’s public gardens.
