Mansions of Newport, RI

We spent Memorial Day in Newport, RI, for a family wedding. Airline scheduling and fare structures being what they were, we ended up having a four-day weekend there, so we did a bit of touring around. Newport is known for its mansions, having been one of the summer playgrounds of the very rich in the 19th century. So we went on a few mansion tours (and the wedding was held in another mansion).

This is a place called "Green Animals." It was easily our favourite home, in no small part because of the casualness. It's considerably smaller and more like a real home than most of the mansions, and many of the details inside reminded us of the Casa. (No photos were allowed in the house, alas.)

Also, because of the awesome topiary animals in the garden:

Topiary is a pain in the butt to maintain, because there's a lot of pruning and then it spends about eighty percent of its life looking ragged, anyway, and then a branch dies and your bear has only one arm. I don't count fake topiary made by growing vines over a wire cage as actual topiary.

I told my mother about Green Animals and she gave me a look until I promised her I had no intention of adding topiary to our garden. Though come to think of it, a great big topiary bear would work very nicely behind the rose hedge out front.

Some other notes from the garden: I was enjoying the time-travel of going to a climate that is a few months behind us. These poppies are just in bud now, and of course I got a second lilac season, and the roses are just in bud whereas mine are almost past their big flush of bloom.

I did like this pond at Green Animals: it's a bit larger than the pond I want to build in the back, and considerably shallower, but seeing it helped me understand my own pond design a bit better. The way the stone edging meets the water is something I've been thinking about, and this way is definitely not how I want to do it -- too rustic.

Here's the inside of the pond. The rubbly bottom was giving the fish a lot of interesting stuff to do.

One thing I was paying a lot of attention to this time was pathways. Our paths are currently battered sand, but that's not how I want them to be forever, so I've been observing pathways elsewhere for ideas.

Here's a path made of wood chips with a pair of trimmed boxwood hedges as edging. Seems like a lot of work to maintain for a very casual looking path.

This gravel walk with boxwood was more formal and worked better as a composition. Not that I want a pathway anywhere near that formal in our garden, but it's interesting to see how just changing a material makes a big difference.

Most of the gravel paths are edged with steel, which makes for a nice neat edge, especially against lawn.

You can see how the edging makes the gravel path very clean and graphical against the lawn. I've looked for steel (or other metal) edging, but it's one of those things you have to special order around here.

And on the other end of the spectrum, this is Rosecliff, which we chose to visit on the recommendation of the hairdresser who gave me a trim the day after we got into town. Rosecliff was designed by McKim, Mead, and White, the architects who are also known for having designed the old Penn Station in New York.

If I had that much space, you can be certain I would not just have a plain lawn on it.

I did like this weird little touch in the lawn, though: a birdbath with squirrels on it. I think the dogs would enjoy such a birdbath.

As you can tell by the fact that this post comes days after we got back, we're a bit busy right now with non-house things. But the nail gun arrived the day before we left, and we're ready to get down to business on several projects.

Technorati Tags: new england, newport, paths, topiary, victorians

posted by ayse on 05/29/08