Martha's Favorite Garden Event
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- 8 min read
TRADE SECRETS IS ONE OF THE FEW EVENTS THAT MARTHA STEWART ALWAYS PUTS ON HER CALENDAR
By Anastasia Stanmeyer
Photo courtesy of Trade Secrets
Spring 2026
Some say it’s the best kept secret this side of the Berkshire Hills. But take it from Martha Stewart: Trade Secrets is the garden event of the Northeast. In Fact, there are few events that she considers sacrosanct: her family’s birthdays, her summer vacation in Maine, her Christmas party, her Easter egg hunt, and Trade Secrets.
So, before we go any further, get out your calendar and join Martha in marking May 16 and 17 for Trade Secrets Garden Tours and Rare Plants & Garden Antiques Sale. You’ll be glad you did.
Trade Secrets is well-known to niche gardeners like Martha who love rare plants and garden antiques. The event, a fundraiser for domestic violence prevention, features private garden tours and a sale at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut, a mere 30-minute drive from Great Barrington. If you ask people in the Berkshires what Trade Secrets is, though, many may be stumped. It’s not something that has been largely publicized locally—until now. And there’s no one better to share what it’s all about than the doyennes of design, decorating, gardening, and all- around domestic greatness.
Trade Secrets began 26 years ago as a small plant sale at the country home of Martha’s good friend, legendary interior designer Bunny Williams. One of Bunny’s gardeners, Naomi Blumenthal, had become intrigued with propagating rare and unusual primroses. She was so successful in her venture that Bunny’s greenhouse became overrun with seedlings. “In the winter, you sort of get carried away because you have nothing to do, so you start these cuttings and seedlings,” says Bunny. The two joined forces with horticulturalist Debbie Munson, and a plant sale was born. Bunny also invited some of her antique dealer friends “because it’s fun to be able to buy the container that you’re going to put your plant in,” she says.
Bunny wanted the proceeds to go to a good cause; she didn’t have to look far. Blumenthal was a board member at Women’s Support Services (now Project SAGE) and suggested a fundraiser for the nonprofit domestic violence agency. Located at the border of Massachusetts and New York. Project SAGE connects with Elizabeth Freeman Center in Pittsfield and Grace Smith House in Poughkeepsie when clients overlap.
“It’s so special that this kind of idea blossomed into something that could help fund domestic issues, and today they go into high schools to talk to students,” Bunny says of Project SAGE.
For the first Trade Secrets in 2001, Bunny offered her 15-acre property in Falls Village, Connecticut, as the venue. After a second successful year, Trade Secrets outgrew its location and moved to Wake Robin Inn in Lakeville, and then to LionRock Farm in Sharon. It is now held at Lime Rock Park, a perfect location for the more than 50 vendors, including, from the Berkshires, Glendale Botanicals, Helia Native Nursery, Hillside Nursery, The Berkshire Galleries, Scout House, Honeychurch Home, Berkshire Home & Antiques, and Wendy G. Jensen Baskets. The event now draws around 3,000 people and pays for 30 percent of Project SAGE’s budget.
Garden tours on the Saturday before the sale make it a weekend event. Bunny always opens her own garden to 600 ticketholders, and it’s the first one tosell out. This year’s tour also includes the garden of Michael Trapp in West Cornwall, Connecticut; Clove Brook Farm in Millbrook, New York; the garden of Katie Ridder and Peter Pennoyer in Stanfordville, New York; Broccoli Hall in Amenia, New York; and Haroldhurst Farm in Valatie, New York.
Some 200 people volunteer at the tours and sale, and underwriters cover the cost of Trade Secrets, ensuring that all proceeds go directly to support the programs of Project SAGE.
“If you love going to visit gardens or you love just a day out at an antiques flower show, it’s an awesome day out!” says Kristen van Ginhoven, executive director of Project SAGE. Kristen, who lives in Lenox, is widely known in the Berkshires as co-founder of WAM Theatre. She joined Project SAGE in June 2024, and last year was the first time she attended Trade Secrets.
“I was, like, why isn’t everybody in the Berkshires coming to this?” she says. “People with these extraordinary gardens are opening their homes for timed garden tours. It’s a chance you’re never going to get. That, to me, feels really special, and new this year is that they’re all private gardens.
“People flock to the Berkshires because they love the nature and they have an appreciation of outdoor beauty. With Trade Secrets, you couldgo visit gardens and just have this extraordinary time, and have lunch somewhere cute in-between. And then on Sunday, the sale at Lime Rock starts at 7:30 and goes until 2. There’s classical music playing, and there’s beautiful plants and these extraordinary garden antiques, and there’s food and the vibe is just so fun.”
There’s no need to convince Martha, who calls Trade Secrets one of her favorite garden shows. The all-day affair for her usually includes shopping and socializing, having breakfast or brunch, stopping at Bunny’s house, and then more antiquing on the way home.
“That has been a big benefit to Trade Secrets’ growth, to have somebody like Martha talk about it,” says Bunny.
Martha wouldn’t miss it for the world. “Bunny and her committee have done an amazing job of making this the premier garden event of the Northeast,” says Martha. “I usually get number one or two in line.”
Along with bringing two trucks, Martha is accompanied by her blogger, Jocelyn Santos, and her head gardener, Ryan McCallister, as well as a couple of other friends. “We have plenty of room to carry stuff home, and the trucks are always full by the end of the day,” says Martha, always on the hunt for plants and other items for her 156-acre Bedford, New York, estate and 100-acre woodland garden in Maine.
“I have so many things that I bought there that are growing in my garden, and so many pieces of furniture and garden ornaments that I bought there over the years. They’re a daily reminder,” says Martha. “If you’re a serious gardener like I am, it is very difficult to get to all the different garden centers and various growers in the Northeast and elsewhere to buy the plants that you’d like foryour garden. So, this is the one day where youcan go and visit with the growers of epimediums, the growers of hellebores, the growers of different kinds of conifers—all the kinds of plants I collect.
“I have such an epimedium collection. Epimediums are a small perennial plant that grow anywhere, from one inch off the ground to maybe 12 inches off the ground. Once they get established, they spread very nicely. Theyare a shade-loving plant. There are hundreds of different cultivars, but I have them all. I have bought all my collection there, and I havea collection that probably rivals its growers because I have all of theirs. There are minuscule differences between each cultivar. It makes me want to go and see what else they have. It’s such an easy way to do it, because they’re all in one place.”
What Bunny loves about the event is seeing so many people and friends that she hasn’t seen for a long time. Although there is nothing that she really needs for her garden that she has cultivated for over 40 years, Bunny always finds something special at Trade Secrets. “I love my dahlias,” she says. “If somebody is growing dahlias and they’ve got a new, beautiful dahlia or a tree peony at Trade Secrets, I’m there!”
That level of enthusiasm is palatable from the very start of Trade Secrets. “I don’t know any event—and I go to a lot of events—where people are so excited that they are standing in line for an hour to get in,” Bunny continues. “These are plant people. They are serious, and they’re excited to find things that are special.”
Every gardener has something that they specialize in, and certainly people are centered on native plants and eager to learn and find more.
“You can buy as much or as little as you want, and you make friends with the growers,” says Martha. “You establish relationships with people that might be helpful to you and your gardening ventures.”
Martha also goes for the antiques, which she buys not only for her garden, but also for her homes. Best of all, it’s a great time and she gets to see people that she hasn’t seen for a year. Martha not only has been a longtime friend of Bunny and her husband, John Roselli, who is an antiquarian, she is also very familiar with the Berkshires and loves returning to the region for Trade Secrets. Her first house was located in Middlefield, Massachusetts, and she holds fond memories that she loves to share.
“It was just like the perfect beginner weekend house from New York,” says Martha. “Drive up to the Berkshires, start creating a garden, have a new group of friends, and learn about a whole new community. It was a very nice kind of life. We learned our home-building skills and gardening skills, all there on our little 50-acre farm. There was only one TV in our neighborhood. We all gathered to watch the first man walk on the moon.”
Martha has come a long, long way from that first house that didn’t even have running water or electricity when they first moved in. A recent endeavor of hers is the Martha Stewart Iconic Estate Housing Collection. She is working with Hapi Home, a technology-led prefab home developer specializing in precision-engineered, light-gauge steel frame kits designed for rapid, on-site assembly. She’s putting one on a piece of property for a small staff home. “They’re really gorgeous,” she says. Hapi Home asked Martha’s team to design four homes inspired by her own legendary residences: Bedford, Lily Pond, Skylands, and Perry Street, reimagined for today and built with Hapi’s system. “They’re very charming, and they’re certainly worth a look at if you’re thinking of building something,” says Martha.
“I had a very big business with KB Home, one of the premier builders, which was not exactly prefabricated but mass fabricated homes in big communities,” continues Martha. “It was a very successful venture. People still write to me who are living in some of the Martha homes, telling me how much they’re enjoying their homes. It’s part of our business. We are homemakers.”
Martha also has a new skincare line, Elm Biosciences, which you can buy online or through your dermatologist. And she’s working on a software program called HINT (Home Intelligence), an app for organizing your living space.
Another exciting event coming up is the opening of The Bedford by Martha Stewart, a restaurant at Foxwoods Resort Casino. Inspired by her iconic 1925 country farmhouse, The Bedford brings her celebrated style, hospitality, and personal favorites directly to the heart of the Grand Pequot Tower.
“She’s amazing,” says Bunny. “There isn’t anything that you bring up that Martha isn’t going to try. I admire that about her.”
The two longtime friends don’t see much of each other during the year because they’re each working on their own projects. But they will definitely converge in May for Trade Secrets—something they are both looking forward to.
“Everybody is so pleasant and so nice,” says Martha. “It’s just a delightful day.”
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