Lower Garden

The Lower Garden is situated below the house and some 25 feet above Lake Massawippi. It combines a rock garden on a steep hillside and slate-edged beds on flat grassy ground to create a serene flower-filled garden room.  A fieldstone wall provides a visual anchor at the base of the rock garden. The walls extend at right angles, partially outlining the shape of the summer cottage that once stood on the site. A slate-edged flower border suggests a fourth wall.

In this border and on the rocky hillside, Patterson planted magnolias, azaleas and boxwood, plants common in her home state of Virginia. These Southern trees and shrubs join plants introduced by earlier owners, reinforcing the links to the past suggested by the remains of the summer cottage and bringing the past of both the site and its inhabitants into the present.

The garden is screened from the lake by a mass of tall spruce and cedar trees. Limestone slab steps define the entry to the space while a gate echoing the architecture of the house marks the transition from garden room to woodland paths. The Doucet-Saito sculpture Au bord du printemps sits near the crest of the hill, overlooking the Lower Garden and the lake below