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Day three of our second trip to Newport, Rhode Island dawned bright and sunny so I snapped another selfie on the balcony while the hubs was off having breakfast.

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My spouse is not a picture taker… and on the rare occasion he does snap one of me? I’m usually headless or walking away…so if I want a photographic memory to take home? I have to take it myself.

And speaking of balconies…

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Not too shabby.

First on the agenda that day was the Green Animals Topiary Gardens in Portsmouth.

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A seven acre estate on Narragansett Bay, it’s the northern most topiary garden in the United States and a pretty spectacular place.

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I’ll quote the history…

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This small country estate was purchased in 1872 by Thomas E. Brayton (1843-1939), Treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Fall River, Massachusetts. It consisted of seven acres of land, with a white clapboard summer residence, farm outbuildings, a pasture and a vegetable garden. Gardener Joseph Carreiro, superintendent of the property from 1905 to 1945, and his son-in-law, George Mendonca, superintendent until 1985, were responsible for creating the topiaries.

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Carreiro was recruited to design and maintain ornamental and edible gardens as part of a self-sufficient estate. Besides planting fruit trees, perennial beds and vegetable gardens, he experimented with trimming some fast-growing shrubs into unique forms. The first topiaries were started in the estate’s greenhouse in 1912 and later moved.

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Mr. Brayton’s daughter, Alice, gave the estate its name because of the profusion of “green animals.” She made it her permanent residence in 1939. Miss Brayton was an avid gardener and loved to entertain. She hosted a party for Jacqueline Bouvier (Kennedy) in her debut season and for years entertained young Caroline and John Kennedy Jr. at parties to celebrate the harvest. 

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She also regularly allowed the public to enjoy the grounds. Upon her death in 1972, at the age of 94, Miss Brayton left Green Animals to The Preservation Society of Newport County. Today, Green Animals remains as a rare example of a self-sufficient estate combining formal topiaries, vegetable and herb gardens, orchards and a Victorian house overlooking Narragansett Bay.

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The amount of work that goes into maintaining this garden must be staggering.

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The teddy bears hadn’t quite filled in when we visited but they were still sweet.

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We can barely keep the shrubs around our neatly pruned…

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So color me impressed.

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