Beauport: An Eclectic Seaside Getaway

If you are interested in interior design, architecture, historic homes, and antiques as well as gardens, you will thoroughly enjoy Beauport. Beauport was the summer home of Henry Davis Sleeper, one of the country’s first professional interior designers. Perched in a dramatic setting on Gloucester’s Eastern Point, Beauport showcases Sleeper’s unique vision and artistic talent in 40 beautifully preserved rooms and a small lush garden.

Eastern Point was developed as a wealthy summer enclave in the early 1900s. Sleeper came from a prominent Boston family and was introduced to the area in 1906. He was “clearly besotted” by the site’s natural beauty, purchased a waterfront lot, and began constructing his esoteric residence. The home looks like it belongs in a fairy tale, with a blend of Gothic, medieval, early Colonial, and Arts and Crafts architecture. Built of stone and wood, it features steeply pitched roofs, round towers, a belfry, ornate chimneys, and diamond-paned leaded-glass windows.

The interior is a warren of eclectic rooms connected by alcoves and stairways and packed with more than 10,000 furnishings, salvaged architectural details, and decorative objects. Each room has its own theme based on literature, a historical event, or a collection.

You will see a Jacobean-style dining room that feels like an English pub; a colonial-era kitchen; a marine master parlor overlooking Gloucester Harbor; a two-story, balconied book tower; and the “China Trade” room, with its pagoda-inspired balcony and 1780s hand-printed Chinese wallpaper.

Beauport was both a home and a professional showcase and led to a successful interior design career that included clients such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, Henry Francis du Pont, and Hollywood celebrities. After Sleeper passed away, the mansion was purchased in 1935 by Helena Woolworth McCann who preserved it mostly unchanged. Her heirs donated it to Historic New England in 1942.

Like the house, the garden evolved over several decades and is characteristic of an Arts and Crafts design. It is divided into several formal outdoor rooms and intimate spaces accented with sundials and classical statuary. The entry garden’s boxwood hedge and gravel paths enclose a small cottage garden of lush perennials. Brick patios and flower-edged terraces at the back of the house overlook the harbor. Further from the house, the materials change to rough stone, flowing lines adapt to the natural contours of the site, and plantings feature native shrubs and perennials and Pennsylvania sedge lawns. The garden was restored in 2012 to its 1920s appearance.

75 Eastern Point Blvd., Gloucester, MA 01930, (978) 283-0800, historicnewengland.org/property/beauport-sleeper-mccann-house

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Spring Spectacular at the Stevens-Coolidge House and Gardens

Photo courtesy of Stevens-Coolidge Place

A Spring Spectacular, running from April 21 to May 16, launches the rejuvenation of The Stevens-Coolidge House and Gardens. More than 165,000 bulbs will adorn nine display gardens with the exuberant colors of spring, and visitors will enjoy a series of events and programs staged amidst the garden’s beauty.

The Stevens-Coolidge House and Gardens is a prime example of a Country Place estate—a style that was popular with wealthy Americans in the early part of the 20th century. The Stevenses were one of the founding families of North Andover, farming at what was originally called Ashdale Farm since 1729. In 1914 Helen Stevens inherited the estate, and with her husband, John Gardner Coolidge, transformed the farm into an elegant summer residence.

John Coolidge was member of the Boston elite—the nephew of Isabella Stewart Gardner and a descendant of Thomas Jefferson. The Coolidges hired preservation architect Joseph Everett Chandler to remodel the house and garden in the Colonial Revival style that swept the country after the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

Chandler’s design for the exterior was based on a formal layout of garden rooms with informal plantings. The main gardens were sited behind the house to offer privacy. The house opened onto a shaded brick terrace that offered views of the perennial garden, which was enclosed by hedges and laid out in a pattern of rectilinear beds with colorful perennials. The Italian-style fragrant Rose Garden replaced the old barn, cow yard, and pig sty. Adjacent to the perennial garden, the Rose Garden could also be entered through an upper terrace, which provided a wonderful view of the flowers. The neighboring greenhouse complex allowed for a grapery, potted tropicals for the house, and plant propagation. 

Construction of the rose garden

The rose garden today

The Coolidges became enamored with chateau gardens while they lived in France during WWI, and Chandler designed for them a French flower garden, screened on one side by a brick Serpentine Wall. Modeled after those designed by Thomas Jefferson for the University of Virginia, the wall supports espaliered fruit trees. The garden was eventually converted to lawn, but in 2000 the original layout was restored and replanted with an incredible display of annuals, herbs, and vegetables.

The serpentine wall

The French Flower Garden

photo courtesy of Stevens-Coolidge place

Ashdale Farm maintained its agricultural heritage throughout Helen Stevens Coolidge’s lifetime. The family kept farm animals, grew vegetables in the kitchen garden, and harvested apples from their orchard. When Helen Stevens Coolidge died in 1962, she left the property and an endowment to The Trustees of Reservations. Many of her gardens, including the rose garden, greenhouse, potager, perennial garden, and cutting garden have been restored to their former appearance.

In November 2020, The Trustees announced a multi-year rejuvenation at the Stevens-Coolidge House and Gardens. The plan preserves the overall architectural structure and American Country Place style, while adding new and expanded display garden spaces, featuring plantings of the latest ornamental species, varieties, and cultivars in contemporary designs. More than 5,000 plants and 165,000 bulbs were added to the gardens, as well as native shrub and wildflower displays, and nature trails through the woodlands, fields, and meadows of the historic Ashdale Farm property. You will enjoy a spring visit to the glorious Stevens-Coolidge House and Gardens this spring!

Photo courtesy Stevens-Coolidge Place

Stevens-Coolidge House and Gardens, 137 Andover St., North Andover, MA 01845, (978) 682-3580, thetrustees.org/place/stevens-coolidge-house-and-gardens/

Gardens are open during the season daily (closed Wednesdays), 10 am–5 pm. Tuesday 10 am–7 pm.

New Hampshire's Garden of Whimsical Sculptures

Photo courtesy of Bedrock Gardens

Bedrock Gardens is a 20-acre garden that Carol Stocker of the Boston Globe aptly described as a “cross between Sissinghurst and the Dr. Seuss Sculpture Garden.” In 1980 Bob Munger and Jill Nooney purchased this former dairy farm and began a 30-year transformation of the landscape into a collection of themed garden rooms enlivened by whimsical sculptures.

Nooney is a practicing clinical social worker, as well as an artist and graduate of the Radcliffe Institute Landscape Design program. She uses old farm equipment and repurposed metal to create a variety of abstract sculptures, arches, arbors, water features and “creatures” inspired by nature and her imagination. Munger is a retired doctor and a lifelong tinkerer. Nooney is the garden’s visionary artist and “problem maker.” He is the “problem solver,” the implementer of those visions, including beautifully patterned walkways and patios, and hydraulics for water features.

Nooney and Munger created their garden as a journey with “places to go, places to pause and rest and interesting things to see along the way.” Nearly two-dozen “points of interest,” many with humorous names, are connected by paths that wind through garden rooms, around ponds, and through woodlands.

Closest to the house, a yew hedge encloses a formal parterre planted with white flowers, with a diamond patterned bluestone path and a circular pool and fountain. The Straight and Narrow garden features a cobbled-edged path that runs between beds of native trees, shrubs, and perennials. The Swaleway’s woodland wildflowers welcome spring amidst towers of balanced stones. The Garish Garden’s playful sculptures fit in with flowers in flaming reds and oranges and trees and shrubs with bright gold foliage.

Bedrock Gardens is full of new ideas for gardeners as well as new takes on classic garden forms. The Wiggle Waggle is a wavy 200-foot long water channel, planted with lotus and water lilies. The Spiral Garden is a “twist” on a traditional maze garden, with twirling roof ventilators on spiral stands that emphasize the Fibonacci-inspired paving laid in a moss floor. Grass Acre is a “painting” of Switchgrass, Hakone Grass, and Little Blue Stem, anchored by a metal sculpture that evokes a mountain range. The Dark Woods is a grove of dead trees accented with sculptural ghosts, spiders, and other scary creatures. The Wave is a series of 26 small metal characters on pedestals backed by a tall arborvitae hedge. Several ponds and many more gardens await the visitor.

Walking through the gardens is a delightful journey. There are many places to sit and enjoy a vista or a sculpture along the way. The Japanese garden and Tea House offer quiet repose in the woods, and the two thrones at the Termi at the far end of the large pond offer a stunning view along the 900-foot axis through the garden. Nooney has designed the garden with an artist’s eye and her strategic placement of focal points and vistas takes classical garden design concepts into a contemporary setting.

Nooney and Munger want to preserve the garden for future generations and are working with Friends of Bedrock Gardens and new executive director John Forti to transition the property into a public garden.

Bedrock Gardens will close out the 2017 season with a special fundraising Fairy House and Hobbit House Festival Weekend, October 7-9, 11 am to 3 pm. Tracy Kane, award-winning Fairy Houses author, www.fairyhouses.com, will read from her books. Visitors can stroll along a Fairy and Hobbit House Trail past houses created by gardeners, artists, and children, and take time to make their own house out of natural materials provided. Chili, books, whimsical handmade creations and fairy fare will be for sale. The entire garden will be available for touring.

Bedrock Gardens, 45 High Rd., Lee, NH 03861, (603) 659-2993, bedrockgardens.org

Excerpted from The Garden Tourist, 120 Destination Gardens and Nurseries in the Northeast by Jana Milbocker

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