SEE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL LEAVES: JEFF FOLIAGE
JEFF FOLIAGE
Fall foliage guru Jeff Folger knows the best places in the world to find the most beautiful colorful leaves. For over 20 years, he’s been obsessed with scouting them out, photographing their glory, and sharing his findings with leaf peepers that come from near and far in search of autumnal holy grail.
Folger is best known as “Jeff Foliage,” kind of like a leafy version of Johnny Appleseed. While he’s been all over the world in search of autumn color, he proclaims New England to be where the most beauty autumn leaves are found.
There’s some science behind Folger’s claim. New England is home to an incredibly diverse array of hardwood trees. While other places are more homogenous -- Colorado with its golden leafed birch and aspens, for example -- New England’s tree species display an autumn mix of fiery reds, hot oranges and bright yellows, sometimes all found together in the same leaves.
New England boasts over 60 varieties of color producing trees, including Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum), Red Maple (Acer rubrum), Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum), Birch (Betula cordifolia), Red Oak (Quercus rubra), Pin Cherry (Prunus pensylvanica), Hickory (Carya glabra, Sassafras (Sassafras albidum), and American Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua), to name just a few. And that’s why visitors from all around the world flock to New England each autumn.
New England is a vast territory. One could travel thousands of miles across the states of Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, on a quest for peak leaf nirvana. In fact, each year, Folger travels with his wife Lisa, covering about 5,000 miles, radiating out from his home base of Salem, Massachusetts. He’s not just aiming for peak, he’s all about the journey.
Beyond fueling his personal passion for fall foliage, he gets great joy from helping others home in on the beauty. Knowing exactly where to find it can be a challenge. While foliage maps show bands of color as autumn progresses from north to south and from higher elevations to valleys and coastal areas, they don’t tell you specifics about where to find the most beautiful displays. That’s where Jeff Foliage excels.
Folger photographs and posts the specific locations of the most scenic spots he finds on his website and Fall Foliage Facebook page, to share them with fellow foliage fans. Just because an area touts beautiful fall foliage, doesn’t mean every road, hillside or thicket is equally gorgeous. Folger tells us which barn, church, clearing, overlook, bend in the road… is sporting New England’s finest.
While you might be tempted to make a V-line right to the best spots (which change every year, BTW), let the journey be the beauty. There’s plenty to explore. And fall forest bathing can bring longer lasting beauty that you can bring home with you.
Folger finds his fantastic foliage in a range of settings -- some quite rural, in thick forests and heady mountaintops, some in charming hamlets, with white-steepled country churches and quaint historic covered bridges. Each outing is a fall treasure hunt.
Follow Folger’s lead. And plot your own leaf-inspired adventure. Hurry! The clock is ticking! A few weeks from now, you will only see that “all the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey…”
Check out Folger’s article (one of many) on how best to find peak fall foliage in New England.
Folger uses Delorme Map Books (also known as gazetteers) and a GPS in conjunction to help him navigate. He reminds us: “Just because the GPS says there is a road there doesn’t mean there is.” He also recommends John Arnold Kaplan’s fieldbook, “Vermont Scenics.”
While the best spots change every year, some of Folger’s all time favorite foliage places in New England include:
Check out Folger’s delineations of fall foliage locations by state, where you can see scenic routes and locations broken down by each New England state.
Follow @Foliage_Reports on Twitter and @Jeff_Foliage on Instagram
You can purchase fine art prints of Folger’s foliage images by visiting his Gallery.
Read more about Beautiful Leaves all this week on BeautifulNow. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
Want more stories like this? Sign up for our weekly BN Newsletter, Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. Join our BeautifulNow Community and connect with the most beautiful things happening in the world right now!
Do you have amazing photos? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Competition.
