To: Bluedot Living
From: Remain
Subject: Our Virtual Garden Tour Series
Originally developed as part of Nantucket Footprints, a program focused on highlighting sustainability efforts and strengthening shared environmental understanding, Remain’s Virtual Garden Tour series reflects a clear and grounded idea: individual choices shape the health of our island. What began as a digital resource has grown into a more interactive, accessible platform, designed to meet people where they are — on their phones, online, and in the flow of everyday life.
The series was created to address a familiar disconnect on Nantucket: We see beautiful landscapes every day, but often don’t understand the systems behind them. These gardens are not simply aesthetically beautiful. They are working landscapes, designed to support pollinators, reduce water use, mitigate erosion and strengthen biodiversity over time. The challenge was how to open those spaces up, moving beyond physical boundaries and creating ways for more people to engage with and learn from them.
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The solution was to bring the gardens into a shared, digital space.
Launched in fall 2023, the Virtual Garden Tour series offers an interactive experience that allows users to move through each landscape at their own pace. Visitors can follow pathways, pause at specific plantings, and engage with layered educational content throughout. Each tour begins with a short video introduction from the land stewards who care for the space, grounding the experience in real knowledge and on-the-ground practice. From there, users can explore plant selections, download guides, and better understand how and why these landscapes function the way they do.
The first tour, a Native Biodiversity Meadow, was developed in collaboration with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. It highlights the role of native plant diversity in supporting wildlife while reducing the need for irrigation and chemical additives; demonstrating that ecological and practical solutions can go hand in hand.
The series expanded through partnerships with the Nantucket Land Bank and the Nantucket Garden Club, each contributing a distinct approach to land stewardship. The Land Bank’s pollinator garden shows how even a small footprint can support broader ecosystem health, while the Garden Club’s coastal resilient garden at the Saltmarsh Center offers a model for planting in sensitive, changing environments.
These collaborations are central to the work. Stewardship on Nantucket is shared, and no single organization holds all the knowledge or responsibility. The Virtual Garden Tour series reflects that reality by bringing together different perspectives to create something more useful, more accessible and more connected.
– Photo courtesy of Remain
Accessibility is a core priority. The tours are available online through Remain’s website, where users can explore each garden, watch companion videos and download plant guides to reference in their own spaces. The intent is not just to inspire, but to provide practical tools; resources that can be applied at any scale, whether that’s a backyard garden or a larger landscape.
Because that’s where impact begins.
Across the United States, more than 40 million acres of land are maintained as lawn. Even small shifts toward native planting can have a measurable effect on biodiversity, water use and long-term landscape resilience. On Nantucket, where land is limited and environmental pressures are real, those shifts carry even more weight. A single reimagined garden can support pollinators, improve soil health and reduce maintenance demands, while contributing to the broader resilience of the island.
The Virtual Garden Tour series makes that kind of change feel achievable. It lowers barriers, whether geographic, educational, or logistical, and offers a clear entry point into more sustainable practices.
In that sense, the project is about more than gardens. It’s about how we understand and interact with the landscape around us. It’s about making informed decisions that reflect both place and purpose.
And ultimately, it’s a reminder that meaningful change doesn’t have to be large-scale to matter. It starts with individual choices, made thoughtfully, shared openly and rooted in the place we call home.
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