Naumkeag
A shingled Berkshire house and thirty years of garden collaboration produced the Blue Steps, Chinese Garden, terraces, and mountain views.
Artwork inspired by Mabel Choate
A shingled Berkshire house and thirty years of garden collaboration produced the Blue Steps, Chinese Garden, terraces, and mountain views. Naumkeag’s power lies in patron Mabel Choate and landscape architect Fletcher Steele treating the estate as an evolving experiment. Color, stairs, water, borrowed scenery, and theatrical sequence resist polite period-house expectations.
Reserve a house tour if interiors matter and leave equal time for the garden rooms. The Blue Steps are only one element; move from topography and house axis toward smaller, stranger enclosures. Steep slopes, stairs, gravel, and fragile plantings limit some routes. Popular seasonal events use separate admission and can dominate parking.
- House
- 1886
- Client
- Mabel Choate
- Landscape architect
- Fletcher Steele
Quick guide
- Begin at the house
- Garden geometry responds to its rooms.
- Descend the Blue Steps
- Movement is part of the design.
Know before you go
- Begin at the house
- Garden geometry responds to its rooms.
- Descend the Blue Steps
- Movement is part of the design.
- Find the experiments
- Modern ideas hide inside an old estate.
- Look west
- Berkshire scenery completes the composition.
Good to know
Steep slopes, stairs, gravel, and fragile plantings limit some routes. Popular seasonal events use separate admission and can dominate parking.
Notice these
- Blue Steps
- Afternoon Garden
- Chinese Garden