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Rhode Island Foliage Driving Tour
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This is the former property of industrialist Colonel Samuel Pomeroy Colt, and it sprawls over 460 well-tended acres on Narragansett Bay. It's a great place to walk, bike, fly a kite, play bocce, have a picnic or a barbecue, or just while away a quiet hour sitting on the seawall watching terns and gulls play across the water. The pavement is usually sprinkled with bits of broken quahog shells; the gulls take them up high and drop them until they break open and yield their clams. In the middle of the site is a long, low stone barn. It's now home to park management, but the picturesque building once housed Colt's prized cattle. In fact, verdigris-coated bronze statues of two of Colt's favorite bulls flank the entrance and exit to the grounds.
For a clearer taste of what it was like to live in such comfort, take a right turn out of the park and continue for a couple of miles on Route 114 south through downtown Bristol; follow the signs to Blithewold Mansion, Gardens & Arboretum. This is a simple but comfortable 45-room manor, a summer residence in the tradition of those that dot England's countryside.
The manor is set on 33 acres, lavishly planted with more than 2,000 species of flowers, shrubs, and trees, many of them Asian, as was the fashion in 1895, when Pennsylvania coal magnate Augustus Van Wickle established Blithewold. The manor's "Great Lawn," a broad expanse stretching down to Narragansett Bay, was used for drying the massive canvas sails. These powered the grand 12 Meter yachts that first sailed from Narragansett Bay in the 1930s to capture one America's Cup after another.
In the distance is Poppasquash Point and beyond that Prudence Island, but don't let the panorama lull you into missing Blithewold's gardens, and especially its trees. Three are particularly striking: a small Chinese weeping pagoda tree that dates back to the 1870s (the oldest tree in the collection), a giant sequoia so tall at 94 feet that for preservation it needs its own lightning rod, and -- my favorite -- an 80-foot European weeping beech. Within the sanctum of its dense, shading boughs, the temperature is easily four or five degrees cooler, and you can look straight up its majestic trunk and know why the rich are different. To plant a slow-growing tree such as this, you would have to believe that your money and position and power and cultural tradition would long outlive you, that it would all pass down through the generations with your house and property intact, and that one day your distant scion, and perhaps the entire state, would think well of you for it.
Neither is it an accident that many more magnificent beeches line the best streets in Newport, which is only about 30 minutes away. To get there, hop back on Route 114 south, cross the Mount Hope Bridge, and just follow the signs. Along the way you'll pass through Portsmouth, home to Green Animals Topiary Garden, an exquisite six-acre property featuring 70 pieces of topiary, including 25 animal sculptures. (To get there, turn right onto Cory's Lane off Route 14 south.) It's here that you can also tour the Brayton House, a two-and-a-half-story 19th-century Victorian. The home, complete with period furniture, children's toys, and books, serves as an excellent primer for the Gilded Age splendor that awaits you in Newport.
To complete the journey to Newport, get back onto Route 14 south, which connects with Thames Street to take you right into Queen Anne's Square, where a stop at Trinity Church is well worth the trouble of finding a place to park. The church dates to 1698 and has been in continuous use ever since. George Washington, Queen Elizabeth II, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu all prayed here. Trinity's pulpit rises in three tiers. Some of its pews are flanked by magnificent stained-glass windows crafted by Louis Tiffany, and its organ, imported from London in 1733, is said by some historians to have been tested by George Frideric Handel. Today, the organ is played year-round at the 10 a.m. Sunday service.
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