Yankee, in a subsequent edition, published an editor’s note: “Mrs. The old schoolmarm said she’d like to shake her hand. She was on her way to the post office when a ‘regular old-time school marm’ stopped her Model T and asked her to explain the origin of the lupines.Īt the end of the road lives a queer old bird who has so many hundreds of lupines on her land that she has acquired the habit of cultivating the seed when it opens. Hamlin, not yet immortalized as Miss Rumphius, kept her gardening a secret from the world. He also noted a handwritten sign next to a woodpile: “If friends of Hilda Hamlin would tote a few sticks of wood to her cottage, they would be doubly welcome.” Secret Garden He had visited Hilda Hamlin for an interview, noting the spectacular display of lupines along Route 129. Storrs Lee in a 1971 article for Yankee magazine. “Many a motorist with a botanical eye pulls into a gas station for an explanation of the display,” wrote W. Researchers say they arrived in Maine sometime around 1950 – when the real Miss Rumphius entered her 60s - and spread along the Maine coast. Lupines were planted in Europe to stabilize soils and to feed animals, but they’re considered a problem in Lithuania because they crowd out forest herbs. Their two-foot-long, spiky flowers are blue, purple, rose and white. Lupinus polyphyllus are three to six feet tall and stand erect, with leaves below the flower stalk.

They called her ‘Hilda Lupina’ or the ‘Lupine Lady.’ Lupine Lady The real Miss Rumphius didn’t drive, and when friends gave her a ride they’d catch her tossing lupine seeds out the window. She did it in secret, rarely telling anyone about her lupine obsession. Then she began putting seeds in her pocket when she walked to the post office and strewing them along the roadside. Every August she cut bundles of lupine stalks and shook out their seeds over a wider space. She began planting lupine seeds imported from her native England. Like Miss Rumphius, Hilda Hamlin traveled widely, though with her husband and three sons.Īfter leaving her husband in Paris in 1926, she audited courses at Smith, but still came to the little cottage on Christmas Cove in summertime. He was a professor and librarian at Columbia University and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Hilda Edwards graduated from Smith in 1912 and in 1915 married Talbot Faulkner Hamlin.

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