Long Hill

This former family retreat has been renowned for its gardens for almost a century. Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery Sedgwick purchased the 114 acre Long Hill as a summer home in 1916. His wife, Mabel Cabot Sedgwick, an accomplished horticulturist and author of The Garden Month by Month, published in 1907, laid gardens. After her death in 1937, Sedgwick’s second wife Marjorie assumed care for the gardens and eventually collaborated with the Arnold Arboretum. The house itself is a reproduction of the Issac Ball House in Charleston, South Carolina in 1802. Mr. Sedgwick purchased carvings and other architectural details from the Ball House when it was abandoned, and shipped them to Boston by barge. Construction began at Long Hill in 1921, with bricks from an early mill in Ipswich. The gardens are laid out in a series of separate garden rooms surrounding the handsome, Federal-style, brick house. Each room is distinct in its own way, accented by ornaments and statuary. Today, the gardens retain the Garden for Living style with integrated outdoor rooms, mature plantings that blend into the surrounding woodlands, and a spirit of innovation in horticulture.