Brookline -- Cunningham Garden

This garden site of 15,000 square feet, on a property of 31,300 square feet, flourished between 1920 and 1960. A 1945-46 gold medal winner from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the garden and its design reflected its owner/designer's determination to have sun for spring flowers. This resulted in an attractive series of crescent-shaped beds of graduated sizes running down the center of a formal grass terrace. This position, which satisfied the design-conscious eye of the perfectionist, as well as the demand of tulips for sunlight, produced an unexpected splash of color in a lovely, secluded, lived-in garden fitted into a hillside. Evergreen and flowering trees, stone walls, and diagonal trellising served to screen out all signs of neighbors. The garden also contained an herb garden with heart-shaped beds outlined in box and an armillary sphere in the center, a sun-heated pit, a greenhouse, and a cutting garden.

Persons associated with the garden include: Dr. J. R. Taylor (former owner, 1909-1917); Dr. John Cunningham (former owner, 1917-1972); Theresa Ingersoll Cunningham (Mrs. John) (former owner and landscape designer, 1917-1972); and Thomas M. James (architect, 1909).