One day when she was 86, Ruth Page put off plans for an afternoon of writing to take “a simple, half-hour’s walk’’ near her Shelburne, Vt., home. For Mrs. Page, even a casual stroll tended to be brisk, but she contemplated the woods around her with the inquisitive eyes of a scientist, the lyrical thoughts of a poet. At times, the beauty made her stop and stare.

“No artist’s palette can match nature’s. She offered so many shades of green it made me dizzy,’’ she recounted in a September 2007 commentary for Vermont Public Radio. “When the breeze blew, leaves I’d been admiring for their deep, dark green suddenly flashed with the brilliance of melted emeralds, gold along their edges, every vein visible in the X-ray vision of the sun.’’

Before turning to radio commentaries, she had been an award-winning journalist in Vermont: a weekly newspaper editor and a pioneering woman in the state’s press corps. On that day, though, she recalled that “when I was a kid, I read the Doctor Dolittle books, and I remember his asking the youngster who joined him whether he was a good noticer; did he really see what was going on around him? I have tried ever since to be a good noticer, and I get most of my rewards from what I used to think of as the simple beauties of nature, but of course they’re not simple at all.’’

Mrs. Page, whose “Gardening Journal’’ radio segments in the 1980s were aired on more than 170 stations, including many in New England, died of complications from a stroke Oct. 30 in Wake Robin, a Shelburne, Vt., continuing-care community. She was 95 and previously lived for half a century in a Burlington, Vt., house that overlooked Lake Champlain.

“Her voice was distinctive, rather like a cross between a really smart teacher and a loving parent just about out of patience,’’ Betty Smith-Mastaler, a producer and reporter at Vermont Public Radio, said in an on-air tribute after Mrs. Page died. “In fact, she didn’t think her voice was good enough and had to be talked into the idea of speaking on the radio.’’

After ending her on-air gardening journal in the late 1980s, Mrs. Page recorded two decades of radio commentaries that aired until she was nearly 90. In that role, she “had a lively sense of humor and a keen eye for beauty,’’ said Smith-Mastaler, who added that in focusing on the environment, Mrs. Page “often saw potential problems well ahead of the rest of us.’’

Mrs. Page’s observations of humanity’s effect on the natural world could swiftly turn a pastoral recollection into an environmental admonition. In one 2008 commentary, she described “a perfect October day’’ when nature showed off lingering red and gold foliage “like a 16-year-old peacocking around in her first formal gown for her junior prom, as if she had to prove how lovely she could be.’’

That perfect day fell on Oct. 21, however, and “I had to force myself to remember that it was not a virtue, but a human fault, that made so glorious a day of 70-degree temperatures possible in a northern state in ­midautumn. How could we possibly revel in this relaxing warmth when we recalled how abnormal it was? We know it was our own fault that there was no longer hope of the October chill, and sometimes snows, of 40 or 50 years ago.’’

Ruth Wolf Page was born on March 8, 1921, in Upper Darby, Pa., a daughter of Morris Wolf, a history professor, and the former Hilda Yerpe, who had been a concert pianist and gave lessons on a grand piano in their Victorian home.

The youngest of three children, Mrs. Wolf went to Swarthmore College, from which she graduated in 1942 with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Relocating to New York, she worked at the Book Publishers Bureau as the director’s executive assistant, and lived in Greenwich Village, where Proctor Page Jr. resided in an apartment across the street. After he finished a military assignment that took him to India, they married in 1945 and moved to Vermont, where he had grown up.

She worked as a bank teller before their three children were born. When they built their home near Burlington’s Appletree Point, they called it Wild Thyme after the herb that grew at the site. Mrs. Page relished the breezes that blew off Lake Champlain as she went about the many household chores that were supplemented in 1957 with newspaper duties, when she and her husband purchased the Suburban List, a weekly in nearby Essex Junction, Vt.

“She was one of the most energetic people you can imagine — a nimble mind and a nimble body,’’ said her daughter Candace Page of Burlington, a longtime Vermont journalist. “She was always moving, always doing something every minute: typing editorials at the kitchen table, hanging the laundry, doing the dishes. She did everything every mother did and had a full-time job.’’

Self-taught as a journalist, Mrs. Page was the weekly newspaper’s only real reporter. Along with writing the “Lady Fare’’ column, she set straight officials in local towns who thought they could hold all meetings off the record. “Her stories were always full of her lively voice and had a very conversational tone, so anybody could understand them and enjoy reading them,’’ her daughter said.

With Mrs. Page as the editor, the weekly won many awards. She became the first woman to serve as president of the Vermont Press Association and also served on the board of what is now the New England Newspaper & Press Association, her daughter said. In subsequent years, Mrs. Page served on the boards of the Vermont State Colleges and Green Mountain Power, a utility company.

In the late 1970s, Mrs. Page and her husband sold their newspaper. He ran a printing company in Essex Junction and died in 2004.

Before turning to public radio commentaries, Mrs. Page edited the newsletter of what is now the nonprofit National Gardening Association, eventually turning the publication into a magazine before she retired in 1986. She and her husband had taken up organic gardening at their Burlington home long before that approach became popular, and she turned a collection of her “Ruth Page’s Gardening Journal’’ radio commentaries into a 1989 book with the same title.

A service has been held for Mrs. Page, who in addition to her daughter Candace leaves another daughter, Patti Ruth of Colchester, Vt.; a son, Robert of Oakville, Ontario; five granddaughters; and a great-grandchild.

In her environmental commentaries, Mrs. Page often set an example for listeners to follow, reminding them to do something as simple as picking up discarded beer cans while out for walks.

“I’m hopeful,’’ she said in 2008 and added: “We’re catching on, maybe in time to save most of Earth’s stunning diversity of life forms.’’

Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.