About the Blue Garden

For the development of their 30-acre Gilded Age estate in the Beacon Hill area of Newport, RI, Commodore Arthur Curtiss and Harriet Parsons James hired the nation’s leading landscape architecture firm, Olmsted Brothers, in 1908.  

The Blue Garden, a garden room on the estate, debuted in 1913 with a grand party called “The Masque of the Blue Garden,” lauded as the Newport social event of the season. From then on, events in this garden were covered in detail by newspapers and periodicals across the country.  

When the Jameses died in the early 1940s, the garden— along with its pergolas, pools and walls — fell into disrepair, ravaged by time and invasive trees and shrubs.  

In the 1970s, the estate was purchased by developers and subdivided into 3-acre house lots, with the Blue Garden remaining on one of the parcels.  

In 2011, Dorrance H. Hamilton, philanthropist, garden enthusiast, and Newport summer resident, purchased the Blue Garden and vowed to return it to its original glory. Under the management of Peter Borden, the garden was restored by a team of professionals in including Parker Construction, Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architecture, Olmsted historian Arleyn  A. Levee, and numerous craftsmen. The team used original Olmsted plans, drawings and photographs from the archives at the Frederick Law Olmsted Historic Site, to rebuild the garden.  

As the name suggests, the garden incorporates a unique palette of blues and purples, with touches of white, and has something in bloom each week the garden is open. Over 250 evergreen trees enclose the trellis walls to create a secret garden of colorful perennials and annuals, pergolas, a lily pond, lotus pond, and water features.  

Today, the Blue Garden is known as a classic example of American landscape art and a triumph of historic preservation. The garden is an accredited arboretum with the Morton Register of Arboreta, and in 2018, a permanent conservation easement was placed on the Blue Garden property by the Aquidneck Land Trust.  

Out of respect for the owners and neighbors, please do not visit without a formal arrangement. The garden is private and only open on Thursdays from mid-June through mid-October with prior reservations.