Hedge Restoration Manual: Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site

Noble, William

Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park in Cornish, New Hampshire, preserves the home, gardens, and studios of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907), one of America's foremost sculptors. Even before Augustus Saint-Gaudens bought the property known as Huggin's Folly he had begun to design and create a house and landscape which would become known as Aspet, named for his father's birthplace in the south of France and consciously reminiscent of ' the French and Italian countryside. He began planting an extensive hedge of white pine and hemlock which he and then his wife Augusta maintained for four decades. The purpose of this report is to present a current evaluation of the hedges, to assess their place in the historic landscape and to make recommendations for their preservation and restoration. The hedges were intended by Saint-Gaudens to create and define space and transform a large, solitary and rather bleak hundred year old tavern into a villa which would serve as home, studio and landscape for summer living. Consequently he set about planting a series of fast growing white pine hedges. The choice of white pine is an unusual although sensible one for the time and location. Relatively few choices are available to landscape designers growing evergreen hedges in northern New England. During the later decades of the nineteenth century, after farming had largely abandoned. Cornish, the fields and pastures were starting to grow back in pine. Small trees and saplings must have been sprouting in great numbers and would have been easily available for transplanting. Pine would also have been characteristic of the region and interesting for its texture and color. The hedges were designed to provide background and shelter for people and plants, to protect and define boundaries and space, and to enclose use areas, but above all to extend the architecture into the landscape and create a sense of place dominated by an aesthetic ideal. The hedges defined an arrangement of rooms, some for living and pleasure, others for enclosure of necessary household intrusions and some for -plants and statuary. This has been continued at the site with the addition of newer, decorative and functional hedges.

Hedge Restoration Manual: Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site

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