History of The Fells

The pastoral landscape and cultivated gardens of The Fells in Newbury, New Hampshire, served as a summer retreat for three generations of the Hay family. From 1891 until his death in 1905, John Hay, diplomat and distinguished man of letters, summered in a cottage he built on the eastern shore of Lake Sunapee, facing Mt. Sunapee. He called his estate "The Fells" after the Scottish word for rocky upland pastures.

From 1906 through the 1930s, John's son Clarence Hay and his wife, Alice Appleton Hay, transformed The Fells into an exceptional American estate and working farm. After his graduation from Harvard, Clarence Hay designed and built a walled Colonial Revival style garden featuring arbors and trellises, flowering trees and shrubs, and classic statuary.

Undeterred by the encroaching pines and boulder-strewn fields of Newbury, the Hays transformed sheep pasture into terraced lawns and formal gardens. They created a stonewalled entry court on the east side of the house, which they planted with yew hedges, summer-blooming trees, shrubs and vines. On the west side, they built a hundred-foot-long stone wall that provided structure for a dazzling perennial border featuring iris, delphinium, hollyhocks, phlox, and colorful annuals and biennials. High walls and a cascading fountain on the south side of the house framed a rose garden of hybrid tea roses underplanted with fragrant annuals.

Around 1929, Clarence Hay and a crew of skilled stonemasons began construction of a large rock garden on the south-facing hillside toward the lake. They set lichen-speckled rocks to appear as if they had always been there, and planted hundreds of alpine and rock garden plants to give the impression of a rocky New Hampshire hillside. A stream flows the length of the rock garden; at its center is a lily pool surrounded by azaleas and Japanese iris. Paths meander throughout the garden, and alongside them crevices and raised islands provide growing conditions for the more demanding rock garden plants. Today the hardiest of the original plants remain, and many more have been added.

In 1987, Alice Appleton Hay died, leaving her family's estate to the U.S. Fish & Wildife Service as a wildlife sanctuary. The Fells, an independent non-profit organization, is responsible for the care and management of the historic buildings and gardens within the sanctuary.