The mansion that crowned Bellmont, the sprawling 117-acre estate of John Perkins Cushing and namesake of our town, was razed almost 100 years ago. But a large artifact from Bellmont survives, hidden behind several homes on Preble Gardens and Townsend Roads: an 11-foot-high brick wall, 165 feet long and 13 inches wide, capped with lead and still graced at one end with an impressive granite cornice. The wall once had a twin about two hundred feet to its west; together, they served as windbreaks protecting Bellmont’s formal garden. They were originally part of a 3-acre walled garden, built circa 1810 by Cushing’s predecessor, Ebenezer Preble, a pioneering horticulturalist who founded the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture.
After Cushing bought Preble’s property and adjoining parcels of land in 1834, he built the mansion and landscaped the grounds in the latest English fashion, using thousands of plants imported from Asia and around the globe. The estate included copses of trees, spacious lawns, a pond, and a deer park.
Cushing readily hired (and fired) architects and gardeners to ensure his exacting vision was realized, even luring away the head gardener of the nascent Mt. Auburn Cemetery to work for him. From the top of the hill, there were sweeping views over miles of farmland and, in the distance, the glinting gold dome of the State House in Boston.
Today’s wall relic once defined part of the boundary of Cushing’s formal four-square garden, which contained stunning flower beds and a marble fountain at the central intersection of wide gravel paths. Cushing also used mammoth south-facing brick walls to support lean-to greenhouses—the bricks absorbed and re-emitted the sun’s heat, allowing his exotic plants to thrive through winter. Other walls supported espaliered fruit trees (trained to grow flat against the wall), often pruned by Cushing himself.
Historians have gleaned many details from Cushing’s extensive diaries, in which he recorded his purchases and methods, the minutiae of the weather, the date the peach buds first showed color (and, with no more fanfare than his horticultural notes, the births of his children).
Cushing exhibited prize-worthy fruits and flowers for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, including a scarlet rhododendron from the Himalayas. The gardens were open to the public once a week in spring and summer. Visitors to his greenhouses noted a 30-foot-tall Australian bower plant, “Cloth of Gold” roses, towering vines from the West Indies and the Andes, and Japanese sago palms. Cushing amassed his enormous wealth from the opium trade in China, where he worked from his teenage years to his early 40s.
After Cushing died in 1862, Samuel Payson, owner of a textile mill in Manchester, New Hampshire, purchased the estate. Like Cushing, he exhibited at horticulture shows and opened the gardens to the public. When Payson fell on hard times, Bellmont was sold at auction in 1886 and, over the next 40 years, was subdivided into house lots. For some time, the mansion served as a dorm for a boys’ school (the present-day Benton Library was built as a chapel for that school). When the mansion was demolished in the late 1920s, some of the bricks were reused in homes built nearby. Some Bellmont trees also persist, although a massive 6-foot-diameter ginkgo tree Cushing had likely brought as a sapling from China snapped in a microburst storm a few years ago, narrowly missing both the house beside it and the windbreak wall a few dozen feet away.
Today’s abutters to the wall marvel at the awesome structure defining the back border of their yards, but there is concern about its integrity. In his nearly 40 years living next to the wall, Ray Comeau has become an aficionado of the wall’s history and has carefully repointed his section. But he says a holistic approach is needed to address the entire length on both sides. Near the cornice, the wall has lost at least a foot of height as bricks have tumbled, making it impossible to repoint without danger. Another section of the wall is buttressed with timbers but on just one side. Despite being the last significant piece of Preble Gardens and Bellmont remaining, the wall is an unlikely candidate for Community Preservation Act funds or other public money because it is on private property and there is no obvious route for an easement for public access.
For now, the wall’s neighbors and lucky visitors experience a feeling of reverence and historical gravity, as I did last summer. And through winter’s gales, I imagine its caretakers also appreciate the wind protection it affords, true to its original intent.
Thank you to Jane Sherwin for alerting me to the wall’s existence and to caretakers James Collins, Ray Comeau, Martin Guentert, and Grace Takvorian for sharing it with me. Much of the history comes from the Belmont Historical Society and Alan Emmet’s book, “So Fine a Prospect: Historic New England Gardens.”
Jenny has been gardening in Belmont since 2001 and became a member of the Belmont Garden Club in 2019. From 2010 – 2013 she was the volunteer editor for the Belmont Farmers’ Market newsletter, “Roots & Sprouts.”
