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The New York Times began a recent article with the story of a haggler. Mr. Vineburgh recently bought three clocks from the top Boston jewelers Shreve, Crump & Low, asked for 15 or 20 percent off, and got it. He apparently has a closet full of clothes for which he also haggled discounts.

The article, “Knowing Cost, the Customer Sets the Price” (3/28/12) was about how “newly empowered consumers” use the internet and price apps to find and pay the lowest price possible. “The customer knows the right price,” said Chief Executive of J. C. Penney (JCP) Ron Johnson. “And why is that? Because she’s an expert.” An item that cost Penney’s $10 in 2002 was typically marked up to $28. By 2011, a $10 item had been marked up to $40. But the price the customer actually paid for the $10 item increased only 5 cents during that period — to $15.90, from $15.95. Until 40 percent off, “the customer doesn’t even pay attention,” Mr. Johnson said. JCP’s customers know that everything will go on sale eventually, and they wait. JCP’s pricing strategy seems ridiculous to me, but I bet Mr. Johnson earns a lot more than I do.

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Villandry, in France’s Loire valley, has been an important site since ancient times. Romans succeeded Celts and built a villa, the Villa Andriaca, hence the name Villandry. In the Middle Ages this was replaced by a fortress, Château Colombiers, where King Henry II of England acknowledged his defeat by Philippe Auguste of France in 1189.

The Château buildings
Villandry’s heyday was in the sixteenth century, when the last of the great Loire Valley châteaux was built on the site. Jean le Breton, finance minister of King François I, had been overseeing the construction of nearby Château Chambord for the crown. He acquired Villandry for himself and completed his own château in around 1536.

Nymans is in West Sussex, just south of Haywards Heath and a 20-minute drive from London’s Gatwick Airport. Its splendid gardens are the work of four generations of the Messel family. Ludwig Messel was a London stockbroker, originally from Darmstadt in central Germany. In 1890, at the age of 53, he had made his fortune and settled with his wife and six children in an early nineteenth-century villa with 600 acres. He first extended the house and then turned his attention to the garden. In 1895, he appointed James Comber, a 29-year-old local man who had trained at nearby Wakehurst Place, as head gardener. They first planted a Pinetum on a northern slope with over 15 varieties of pine and many other conifers, designed to provide variations of color, shape and height.

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London is a very old city whose roots go back to Roman times when it was called Londinium. Tucked into its nooks and crannies are many hidden gems. One of these is the Chelsea Physic Garden, a living horticultural museum. Designed around 3.8 acres along the Thames River, it is truly a secret garden and can easily be missed, as I found out 10 years ago when I first went looking for it.

The Chelsea Physic Garden has a unique micro-climate and is ideally situated along the Thames River. The garden has well-draining soil, and the protection of the river from London’s often harsh winters. This enables it to have some very unusual plants, including a 30-foot-tall, fruit-bearing olive tree (the largest in England), other tender plants and a large assortment of lovely ferns.

Historic New England’s collection of more than 1,200 pieces of nineteenth-century children’s tablewares, amassed in the mid-twentieth century by Margaret H. Jewell, is one of the largest in the country. It includes hundreds of small earthenware mugs, and several plates. The majority of the wares were produced in England to be given to children as rewards and tokens of affection.

The earliest pieces date from the 1790s. By the end of the eighteenth century, perceptions of childhood and theories of child rearing had undergone dramatic change under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other romantic philosophers. A more humanistic approach argued that children needed freedom and time to develop in order to slowly assimilate into adult society. Some believed that education should develop a child’s character and morals. Breaking with past practices that forced children to look and act like small adults, the new theories encouraged children to play, dress and develop naturally. These reforms resulted in new clothes, toys and furniture made especially for children.

As I drove to The Fells, in Newbury, N.H., I wondered why even people who live in New Hampshire know so little about it. The Fells is much more than a historic house museum. What makes it so special are its five large gardens that many say are the finest in the state. The rock garden is one of the earliest in the Northeast and some of the original plants are still growing in it today.

The house
The Fells was built as a summer home by John Milton Hay. That name may be familiar to those with an interest in Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War and late nineteenth-century diplomacy. John Milton Hay was a personal secretary to Lincoln, and was at his bedside when he died. He, along with Lincoln’s other secretary, John Nicolay, authored a 10-volume biography, Abraham Lincoln, A History, still a basic reference on Lincoln. Later in life, Hay was ambassador to Great Britain and served as secretary of state under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt. The Fells was the summer home that provided a break from Washington and the political life, and it would remain that for his son and grandson.

Spring is not the time to think about death, but there I was, enjoying the April sunshine in the Old Burying Ground in Ipswich. Come to think of it, though, all those tombstones are actually ways of cheating death rather than celebrating it. They are stand-ins for the early townsfolk.

For no particular reason except that I’m fond of the guy, I was strolling toward the grave of Thomas Dennis, the master joiner who lived here from 1667 till he died in 1706, “aged about 68 years,” as his headstone says. So, he lived in town for about 40 years during which he made the best furniture the fledgling colony had yet seen.

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