topiary | River's world…..

Continuing on with our exploration of the Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth, we left the garden proper and strolled past the house.

Which was lined with impressively trimmed shrubbery.

Sadly the home is not open to tours…

But there’s a big porch with comfortable chairs where you’re invited to sit.

We opted for a bench under the shade of a giant tree.

The lawn slopes down to Narragansett Bay, where we spotted another topiary.

A rather oddly shaped topiary that my husband and I pondered greatly.

I said long legged turtle.

He said hunchbacked manatee.

What say you?

Walking back around the house we saw some ornate wrought iron and walls in much need of scraping and paint.

On the other side of the house… a truly magnificent tree.

A grand old gentleman who no doubt had outlived many of the home’s owners.

Husband, for scale.

We were so impressed by the tree we asked one the attendants how old they thought it was…. which was when he directed us to the resident expert of all things.

This charming young lady of 91 actually worked on the estate as head housekeeper for the last living owner. She had some wonderful stories about the place and informed us the tree in question was over 150 years old.

She lives right up the road and walks down to the gardens every day to help the docents …. as well as socialize. She told us she was quite unhappy with the current crew of topiary trimmers. The policeman was too fat, the giraffe was too short and the goose looked like a duck.

Knowing we were talking to the authority, we asked what the mystery topiary down by the bay was supposed to be.

Not a turtle. Not a manatee.

It was a bear.

Wow.

No wonder she’s unhappy…

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.

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…

Not too shabby.

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

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

I’ll quote the history…

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.

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.

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.

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.