sachusetts, and felt daunted by the dark 

 pines and boulder-strewn fields of 



Newbury. Tfie young couple enlisted the 

 aid of landscape architect Prentice 

 Sanger to help them improve the house 

 and gardens. In courting his wife, 

 Clarence Hay had promised her that to- 

 gether they would build beautiful gar- 

 dens, and so they did, dynamiting the 

 rocks in the lawn and cutting down trees 

 for the view. Over the next forty years, 

 they pursued their horticultural interests 

 with passion. They visited Europe, where 

 they were particularly inspired by older 

 gardens and the landscape of the Italian 

 lakes. Alice Hay had a series of walls, 

 courts and fountains designed as the set- 

 ting for a rose garden, a perennial border, and the 

 display of choice plants. Clarence Hay became ab- 

 sorbed with the building and tending of the rock gar- 

 den and gardening with native plants Today many of 

 the more ephemeral elements of these gardens are 

 lost, but the structure provided by the architecture 

 and plants remains. IVlany of the more successful 

 plantings have matured and are now some of the best 

 examples of their kind to be found in New Hampshire 

 The story of the Old Garden provides a glimpse 

 into Clarence Hay's gardening style and his interest in 

 plants. Although the details of its history are not yet 

 fully understood, it appears he laid out a garden 

 bounded by stone walls along the edge of the woods 

 north of the house. The garden was built along an 

 east-west axis that on one end encompassed a sugar 

 maple within a niche, and on the other a bust of Pan 

 within a hedge of Abies concoior. The north side of the 



This location 



has remained 



true to the 



integrity of the 



New Hampshire 



landscape, 



nexer haxing 



o\er^^/helmed it.' 



main walled room was finished with a 

 wooden bench and arbor, the south 

 entry with a wooden trellis and gate. 

 The intersection of the main axis was 

 marked with a small statue on a ped- 

 estal; the intersection of the axis in 

 the second room, with a fountain. 

 Flower beds filled the quadrants in 

 both garden rooms. The formal walled 

 structure and its white painted 

 wooden arbors and trellises were set 

 amid the trees and accented with flow- 

 ering vines, shrubs and perennials. 

 Garden ornaments, many of them gifts 

 of Chinese, lapanese and Mexican ori- 

 gin, were displayed in niches and on 

 the walls. Outside the walled garden, 

 the walk up to the log cabin was bordered with lilacs 

 and columbine. The Old Garden, sometimes called the 

 Pan Garden, was exemplary of the formal garden style 

 of the first decades of the twentieth century. 



Over the years, the style and plants employed in 

 the garden changed as the Hay family's tastes and in- 

 terests changed and their interests in plants matured 

 The formal beds of annuals and perennials gave way 

 to plantings of wild cardinal flower and choice trees 

 and shrubs. Clarence Hay noted in his copy of L.H. 

 Bailey's New Cyclopedia of American Horticulture a number 

 of the different azaleas and rhododendrons which are 

 still found in this garden today. In the middle 1920s, a 

 rhododendron walk was under the high pines to the 

 south and west of the garden. Dozens of catawba hy- 

 brids ('Boule de Neige' and R. maximum), along with 

 Torch and Flame Azaleas and the native Mountain 

 Pink still bloom from late May into |uly. Soon after a 



24 



The Plantsman 



