The Trustees: Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens

My last stop was Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens owned by the Trustees of Reservations, which I had last visited for Winterlights in 2024. I have already shared details about the property and the family who lived there, but I was able to take a more extensive tour of the house and see the gardens during this second visit.

At the end of a tree-lined path is a three-story, red brick, Georgian style house with a porch roof over the first story. A three-story red brick Georgian style house with a porch roof over the first story and a whitewashed wooden addition on the left. An English style garden with with rectangular beds and a glass greenhouse in the background.

The gardens were developed during the Country Place era between 1890 and 1930. During this time, which overlapped with the Gilded Age, rich people from the United States took grand tours of Europe and collected their favorite things on the trip. When they came home, they asked well-known landscape architects to design gardens that looked like European gardens. Today, the extensive gardens at Stevens-Coolidge House are maintained by volunteers. In the Entry Garden, native grasses mix with foreign flowers to provide a safe stopping place for pollinators. The Cutting Garden resembled formal English gardens with nearly cut grass, rectangular planting beds, and tall perennials originally grown for bouquets or dried flowers. The Rose Garden did not have many surviving blossoms late in the season, but I did like the fountain made of a spitting head.

A collection of native and foreign plants in a pollinator garden beside a gravel path A round pink dahlia with a yellow center and a fuzzy bee drinking nectar A fountain made of a head spitting water into a stone bowl atop a pedestal.

Inside the house, a different section of rooms were open than what I saw during my tour in the winter. The dining room table was set with seasonal dishes, while an ornate, antique, upright Chickering piano stood in the library. The most unique part of the house was its murals, which were restored back in 2020 through 2021. Spanish artist Joseph Remidas painted the Front Hall with garden scenes beginning around 1915. During the restoration, conservator Lisa Mehlin carefully mixed paint to exactly match the original pigments and painted directly onto the original mural. To reach the highest areas of the painting, she stood on custom-built scaffolding attached to the top of the staircase. Her work was so thorough and precise that I would not have realized the mural was restored except for the excellent signage and information on the Trustees website detailing the process.

A formal dining room with a wooden table decorated with floral plates. An ornate but small wooden piano standing next to a sold shelf of books. A triangular mural of trees over a brook painted onto the wall underneath the stairs.

Back outside, I visited the French Garden, also known as the kitchen garden or potager. A variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers are still grown in this garden, attracting plenty of pollinators. The space is protected by a serpentine red brick wall last restored in 2000. My final stop was the land sculptures known as the “Mounts” on Helen’s Meadow, named for Helen Stevens Coolidge. These lawn lumps were trending during the 18th and 19th century, allowing wealthy landowners a boost to see their entire grand estate while presumably making the mowing process more difficult for their gardeners, especially in the era before motorized lawnmowers. Today, grass paths are cut around the Mounts, showing visitors exactly where to go.

A mural of trees, a pond, and a Greek Revival statue at the center of the pond. A cozy living room with early 20th century furniture, a fireplace, and an oil portrait of a stately older woman. A narrow hallway decorated with a mural of trees, wildflowers, and Greek Revival statues. Blue and white delft lamps and matching vases stand on matching wooden tables next to matching wooden chairs.

Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens is open seasonally from May through September, with the first floor of the house, gift shop, and restroom open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Admission to the gardens and grounds are free, while self-guided tours are either free or $5 depending on who is in the house. I have not yet taken the Guided House and Garden Tour, which is $12 for members, $20 for nonmembers, and $10 for children, so I may be back again to learn even more about this beautiful property.

A cozy room with a writing text and bookshelf. Through the doorway is a glimpse of a comfortable chair and other furniture. A yellow flower with eight symmetrical pedals and a bee in the center. An expansive, lush lawn with two manmade mounds and trees in the background.
Location: Stevens-Coolidge House & Gardens, 153 Chickering Rd, North Andover, MA 01845, USA