Author: Taryn McBryde

Island Science

Nantucket’s Rare Sandplain Grasslands

Driving around the south of the island, you may be headed to the beach or just going on a traditional Nantucket “rantum scoot.” Most dirt roads headed to the shore take you past open landscapes of waving grasses, low shrubs, and wildflowers when the season is right. Head of the Plains, Smooth Hummocks, Cisco— these are sandplain grasslands and coastal heathlands. On Nantucket, we’re pretty lucky: the sandplain grasslands here are some of the largest remaining intact grasslands of their kind in the world.

Nantucket Daffodil Festival 2023
Nantucket Events

Highlight of Nantucket’s Daffodil Festival

From the very beginning, the Nantucket Garden Club’s Daffodil Flower Show has been the centerpiece of our island’s annual Daffodil Festival. It all started nearly half a century ago in May of 1975, when the Nantucket Garden Club, encouraged by member Jean MacAusland, organized the first Nantucket Daffodil Show. Sanctioned […]

Steve Tornovish with Fish
Exploring Nantucket, Nantucket Events

Spring Training

You’ve waited all winter, dreaming of getting back out there for the new season. You’ve relived moments from the past season, moments of success, of failure, dreaming endlessly of what could have been. But that was then, this is now. It’s time for the 2023 fishing season to get going.

Girl with net in Nantucket grassland
Island Science

The Buzz about Bees

We know our little island is special. There are so many unique and wonderful things about Nantucket: the history, the community, our flora and fauna, and our open space protection.

Now we can add one more thing to the list; our bees.

Nantucket Essays

Losing Our Community

Many years ago, when the only cars my boys cared about were built out of Lego, we planted daffodil bulbs. The wind was blowing, the sky rushed overhead, and a shower hung out on the Sound, while Angel Rays shone over Cisco. We used a small trowel, knelt in the backyard, and planted the bulbs every couple feet along a stone wall. Afterwards, we had lemonade, chocolate chip cookies, and watched Monsters, Inc for the hundredth time.

Nantucket Essays

Trespassing

by Robert P. Barsanti We arrived before the storm. It had spun up off the east coast of Florida, knocked some sea walls down, then aimed to the west of us. The ferry alarmed the ducks and the seagulls as it crossed the Sound, slipping under the deep purple clouds, […]