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College of the Atlantic is blessed with a luxury of gardens. From the community organic garden at the north entrance to the school to the Beatrix Farrand Garden hailing from the gilded age of Mount Desert Island to the newly reconstructed Turrets Sea Side Garden, a walk through campus is nearly a complete garden stroll. Though not on campus, COA also has the organic Beech Hill Farm supplying the school's kitchen with vegetables and fruits throughout the year. Below, we take you through our gardens, north to south.
 Since the very first summer that COA was in session, there has been an organic garden at the north entrance to campus. Originally used as a kitchen garden to supply the campus with fresh produce, the garden was later opened up to the wider Mount Desert Island community. Plots are available come spring, on a first-come, first-served basis. To find out more, contact Suzanne Morse at SRM@coa.edu.
Visitors leaving the community gardens walk up a path to a short set of stairs and into the Newlin Gardens, established in 1992 by longtime Mount Desert Island resident and COA supporter Elizabeth Battles Newlin to honor her husband, E. Mortimer Newlin. After Elizabeth Newlin's death in 1995, her children, William V.P. Newlin, a trustee of the college and Lucy Bell Newlin Sellers, who teaches drama at the college, honored their mother by establishing the college's first endowed chair, the Elizabeth Battles Newlin Chair in Botany. "Mother was always learning from landscapes. Wherever she lived, she was making or tending gardens. She was an environmentalist long before we had heard of the word," Lucy Bell Sellers said of her mother.
 The formal sequence of rock walled rooms behind Kaelber Hall was created by the celebrated garden designer, Beatrix Farrand. These rooms are a remnant of one of the historic estates that now comprise the campus, offering opportunities for quiet study, intimate conversation and in the summer of 2005, the Touchstones exhibit of outdoor sculpture by regional artists.
"A large granite bench overlooks the Turrets Sea Side Garden at College of the Atlantic. In the distance a string of islands stretch across Frenchman Bay to Schoodic Peninsula. Above the garden stands the historic Turrets. The campus extends uphill, but the garden, concealed behind Turrets, has a sunken, secluded atmosphere." So writes Eamonn Hutton '05, who took on the restoration of the 4000-square-foot garden as his senior project, creating a contemplative garden of pink, purple and blue-grey tones in the style of Gertrude Jekyll's Grey Garden.
We're using the name given to this garden by Susan Choma, a summer visitor to Mount Desert Island who spent several summers cleaning up this lovely, romantic garden south of Turrets, hiddenwithin stone walls. "It has a spirit of its own," says Choma. "It's like being in a beautiful ruin, a perfect setting for a garden."
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