Northshore Home magazine highlights the best in architectural design, new construction and renovations, interiors, and landscape design.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/974577
60 SPRING 2018 A MONG THE FEW REMAINING PLANTS IN THE former Proctor Estate grounds in Topsfield is a fruit-bearing Concord grape vine cascading over a crumbling Italianate pergola. It lives in the lush one-and-a-half-acre backyard grounds of a devoted gardener's English-inspired mini-estate. Back in 2005, Alexandra, an interior designer, innocently set out with a shovel to create a flower bed in the back of her new home. Instead of soil, she hit a concrete walkway and discovered what turned out to be a lost North Shore estate garden. Over the next few years, by methodically digging dirt and clearing vines, she uncovered architec- tural remnants of all shapes and sizes from the former formal gardens created by Thomas Emerson Proctor, Jr. (1873-1949) in the early 20th century. The discoveries Alexandra made were astound- ing. First, she accidentally plowed into an old garden path that led to a greenhouse. Intrigued, she continued to excavate and found more old concrete and stone pathways. One of them led to a handcrafted stonework circle. And the exploration kept getting better. With more backbreaking work, she would eventually uncover the former Irish gardener's cottage, with its adjacent small chapel, the foundation of a large greenhouse, a crumbling pergola colonnade, staircases, balustrades, evidence of loggias, the original brick barn floor, for- merly heated subterranean storehouses, and pictur- esque stone bridges, all hiding under massive tangles of cultivate Concrete walkways, uncovered by Alexandra while setting out to create a flower bed, turned out to be a lost estate garden. nshoremag.com/nshorehome/ overgrown bittersweet and poison ivy. There was more. In the large front yard of Alex- andra's tasteful home she fondly calls a "Chevy," she unearthed, with the help of a friend with a backhoe, a long-forgotten sunken garden with a Continental- style concrete oval centerpiece. And finally, it turned out parts of the property are encircled with low