The green animal topiary garden is located in the Portsmouth which is situated in the Rhode Island. This is the oldest topiary garden as far as the United States is concerned. It contains so much topiary that you will find yourself lost among them. Either it is teddy bear, giraffe, unicorn, reindeer or any other creature; you will find them all being sculptured out of plants. This art can be thought of as the same as the art in which various shapes are being made out of the sand on the sea shore.

You will find here over 35 formal flowerbeds, geometric pathways, rose arbor, grape arbor, fruit trees, and vegetable and herb gardens. There is also one greenhouse which is used extensively to provide seedlings used on the estate. The 1859 Victorian Brayton house museum contains a small display of vintage kid’s toy and the original family furnishings. Ribbons for prize-winning dahlias and vegetables, dating from about 1915, line the walls of the gift shop. This great garden is being preserved by the Preservation Society of Newport County which looks after its maintenance.

This garden was formed by Thomas Brayton in the year 1872. He really had in his mind to make a summer recreation site and for this he bought a small country estate in Portsmouth.

Brayton was the treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in nearby Fall River, Massachusetts and he had in his mind and was looking for the country summer retreat. It consisted of 7 acres (28,000 m2) of land, a white clapboard summer residence, farm outbuildings, a pasture and a vegetable garden. The main Victorian home looked out on Narragansett Bay.

It was Gardener Joseph Carreiro, who was superintendent of the property from 1905 to 1945 and it was he who slowly transformed it into a museum of living sculpture. Carreiro was recruited to design and maintain ornamental and edible gardens as part of a self-sufficient estate. In addition to planting fruit trees, perennial beds, herb and vegetable gardens, Carreiro researched with some fast-growing shrubs to distinctive forms. The first topiaries were started in the estate’s greenhouse in 1912 and later moved.

In the year 1939 Mr. Brayton died and his daughter Alice Brayton took up everlasting residence in 1940. Joseph Carreiro was assisted by his son-in-law, George Mendonca. Both of these gardeners were really responsible for creating the topiaries. Mendonca, who was the son of a nurseryman and dairy farmer, was hired to make repairs in the Brayton garden after a hurricane damaged it in 1938. Mendonca married Carreiro’s daughter, Mary, and together they have lived on the grounds overlooking Narragansett Bay.

I really feel that this garden which they developed was really a masterpiece.

Tags: about garden, animals, topiary garden