RAMSA Red Top

This is an ongoing project I am working on involving lost grand gardens of the 20th century and tracking them down today. More will be posted soon.

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Morelands: This classic New England shingle-style summer estate was built in 1888, designed by Peabody and Sterns, for George Elliot Leighton. It fell into disrepair and in 1925, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Brewster purchased the neglected 850 acre estate from auction and transformed it into "Morelands".

 

Margaret Fitch Brewster was a force in the gardening world in the first half of the 20th century. Their New Haven, CT home later became Edgerton Park in New Haven, a public garden and museum. She was a founding member of the Garden Club of Dublin and turned "Morelands" into one of the most intricate and impressive gardens in the country. She consulted Arthur Shurcliff, a leading Massachusetts landscape designer, for the initial design, but quickly took over all of the design and management herself with George M. Finnie becoming her head gardener. At it's peak in the early 1950s, Brewster had over a dozen meticulously designed "rooms" surrounding the home and kept over 100 gardeners busy all summer long.

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Red Top: After Mrs Brewster's death, the home and gardens was abandoned by the subsequent owners. The current owners, the Caitlin family, purchased the house in the 1970s and brought in RAMSA to help restore and bring the home back to it's former glory. They chose to paint it red, hence leading to the "Red Top" moniker. While the gardens are now a fraction of what they were, they retain their original charm and spirit of Margaret Brewster's vision. Just recently, the Caitlin family was able to bring the original guest house on the property back into the fold, bringing the estate one step closer to its former layout.