Blue Garden
The Property
The Blue Garden is located on a 3. 7-acre property that was originally designated “informal garden” as part of the Arthur Curtiss James 25-acre residential estate on Beacon Hill in Newport, Rhode Island. The “informal garden” evolved into a symmetrical, Italianate Garden, at the behest of Harriet Parson James, who wanted a formal garden of “a monochromatic concentration of purples and blues.” The garden was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Olmsted Brothers Firm and opened in the summer of 1913 with a grand party called The Blue Masque. Surrounded by an evergreen border of trees and shrubs, the garden is a hortus conclusis, or walled garden. The original manor house burned in 1967 and the 25-acre estate was subdivided into residential properties, and sold to developers. One of the parcels included the Blue Garden, but many of the garden’s original features were either demolished or subsumed by invasive trees, shrubs, and vines. The contemporary house built in the 1980’s was demolished in 2012. Fortunately, a neighbor, philanthropist, and garden-lover, Dorrance Hamilton, purchased the property in 2012 to restore the garden. She hired Providence-based Parker Construction and Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Olmsted historian Arleyn A. Levee, as well as other historical and building consultants.
The Collections
The garden was created using archival material from the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts, and other repositories, including the Redwood Library and Athenaeum. The garden had been overgrown by invasive trees and vines and much of the original hardscape and water features that remained had been compromised through neglect. Many of the garden’s original components were recovered and restored. New retaining walls were built to recreate the original grade changed by property lines created in the subdivision that divided the original estate. In efforts to maintain as much of the original garden integrity as possible all of the large surviving Japanese cryptomeria, original plantings to the garden, were harvested and milled for lumber to recreate the north pergola. Some of the original trees were saved in the renovation. A large single stem English yew sits on the western edge of the garden and some of the original little leafed lindens line the roadside. The driveway up to the garden is guarded by a large European hornbeam.
The Mission
Recapturing this work of landscape artistry is intended to teach others about the intellectual and pragmatic challenges of restoring and preserving a garden of such historic significance. It is the hope that the Blue Garden serves as an inspiration to further this legacy while reinforcing stewardship values concerning our collective culture. The Blue Garden truly is a hidden gem nestled on Beacon Hill. Great care was taken to recreate secret garden feel. It was designed as an inner formal garden surrounded by an arboretum of mixed conifers. Texture as well as color are key design elements incorporated into the garden. Varieties of eastern red cedar, eastern arborvitae, and Japanese cryptomeria make up the screen that encloses the blue formal inner garden. Contrary to the straight lines of the formal garden are meandering turf grass paths interlaced within the mixed textured and colored screen of conifers that give small glimpses of the blue garden within. Around every bend are planting beds massed with woody as well as herbaceous species that are blue in either flower or fruit. A grove of white barked gray birch intermixed with evergreen leatherleaf viburnum make up the back edge of the arboretum and gives a distinct contrast to the green conifer enclosure.
