Beacon Hill (Boston, MA) residents fashion hidden backyard gardens. Garden retreats come into being from small pieces of degraded urban soil and shaded settings.

Overview

The Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill (Boston, MA) exhibit triumph over the hardships of creating urban gardens. Beacon Hill residents have fashioned backyard garden retreats from small pieces of degraded soil and shaded settings. The Hidden Gardens are small space gardens at their best.

Hidden behind brick walls and wooden enclosures, these contemporary garden sanctuaries were originally service and laundry yards, and servants' entrances where privies stood. Entrances to these spaces are, as they once were, through narrow and formerly public alleyways or footpaths.

Beacon Hill Garden Club members have organized and hosted a walking tour of theHidden Gardens of Beacon Hill each year since the Club's founding in 1929. Residents, not all club members, graciously open a revolving selection of gardens on the third Thursday of May each year to help the Garden Club support projects and causes.

Tour Day

Lightheartedness prevails on Beacon Hill as innumerable garden volunteers, business community members and visitors to the Hill mingle throughout Tour Day. Thousands of visitors come to Beacon Hill wanting to view these Hidden Gardens, discover their horticultural secrets, and experience a sense of New England history.

The 78th Annual Tour featured 12 hidden gardens, each of which highlighted special traits and qualities. The tour booklet introduced six Gardens of Special Interest with which most tour visitors were not familiar. These spots make the most of open and public spaces on the North Slope of Beacon Hill.

In an outstanding spirit of community cooperation, four Beacon Hill neighborhood groups opened their facilities to provide complementary refreshments, restroom facilities, and relaxation areas. Stopping off at any of these was an opportunity to view outstanding historic buildings not usually open to the public and chat with hospitable Beacon Hill residents:

• Church of the Advent, 30 Brimmer Street,
• Hill House, 27 Mount Vernon St,
• Otis Museum / Historic New England, 141 Cambridge Street, and
• Rogerson Communities Beacon House, 19 Myrtle Street.

Garden Examples

Two of the Hidden Gardens that were on the Club's first tour in 1929 show differing expressions in garden design and evolution:

• 130 Mount Vernon Street, known as the Sunflower Castle because of an Arts and Crafts style sunflower decoration below the eaves, projects an aura and beckons passersby to wonder about its history.

The house, an 1878 remodeling of an earlier structure, was home (1903-1962) to GertrudeBournee, founder and first president of the Beacon Hill Garden Club, and her husband Frank, an architect.

The present garden, entirely hidden from the street and dating from 2003, demonstrates the current owner's interest in Asian garden design while valuing the eclectic personality of the house. Scale and year-round interest are the criteria here for choosing plants and garden artifacts. Varieties of native New England moss draw this serene composition together.

• 21-23 Joy Street possesses a double courtyard that forms a communal garden for owners of the adjacent condominium buildings.

This garden, created in 1928, has narrow passageways for entrance and exit. Its focal point is the grouping, on one of the garden's narrow sides, of pergola, pool, and dolphin fountain that date back to the original garden. The four-foot-deep pool is in working order and used by residents in hot summer months.

Plantings, skillfully selected by some of the buildings' residents, contribute to the year-round quality and relaxing atmosphere of this urban oasis. Some trees are:

• Betula spp. (Birches)
• Cornus kousa (Kousa dogwood) and
• Stewartia sp. (Stewartia).

Shrubs and Vine include:

• Ilex spp. (Hollies) and
• Hydrangea spp.(Hydrangea),
• Wisteria sp.(Wisteria) and
• Clematis spp. (Clematis).

Garden Club Projects and Causes

The Beacon Hill Garden Club is a member of The Garden Club of America, The Boston Committee, and the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts. The Club donates part of the tour proceeds to local, state and national environmental, horticultural, and conservation organizations. Members also co-sponsor an annual Beacon Hill window-box contest, and are currently working with the city of Boston and the Beacon Hill Civic Association on a project to monitor and maintain the Hill's 800 street trees.

Some of the Club's current hands-on horticultural projects within Boston include these gardens:

• Old North Church,
• Codman Circle at Beacon and Charles Streets, and
• the Peter Faneuil House gardens on Joy Street and on Russell Streeet.

©Text and Georgene A. Bramlage, May 2007. Reproduction without permission prohibited.