The Apple Trees of Aspet: Saint-Gaudens’s Orchard in Cornish, New Hampshire

Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park in Cornish, New Hampshire, preserves the home, studios, gardens and art of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, one of the foremost American sculptors of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Hedged garden "rooms," terraces and sculptures overlook the Connecticut River. But alongside the formal design, the landscape kept a working, rural side — and its apple trees are part of it.

Apple trees to the west of Little Studio. Illustration from the 2013 CLR. NPS.

An apple tree and the Little Studio at Aspet. Credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress.

From sheep farm to summer home

In the early 1800s, sheep and wool drove development in New Hampshire. Woolen mill owner Walter Mercer moved to Cornish in 1829 and bought "Huggins' Folly," a house built in 1817 by brothers Samuel and Jonas Huggins, on 134 acres that included two acres of orchard. By 1840, the town had just over 1,700 residents. As farming declined later in the century, vacant farms multiplied, and the state's efforts to sell them drew mostly city people looking for summer homes.

Much of the countryside had been cleared for farming, opening wide views to Mount Ascutney. Augusta, who grew up in Roxbury, Massachusetts — then known for orchards — was drawn to gardens, orchards and farm animals; she may have brought trees from Roxbury, though that hasn't been confirmed. Augustus, born in Dublin and raised in New York, with student years in Paris and Rome, liked the idea of a country home and studio.

A garden at Aspet with geometric planting beds, brick walkways, and sculptures, showing the tall hedge that creates the sense of an outdoor room, 2013. NPS.

Saint-Gaudens (far right) during his first summer at Aspet, 1885, with (from left) his brother Louis, Frederick MacMonnies, an assistant, his son Homer and his wife Augusta. Note the apple trees behind. Credit: National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.

Art, work and play

Saint-Gaudens reshaped the grounds with classical, formal elements inspired by Europe — a terraced flower garden with geometric beds, and hedges that framed outdoor rooms. He loved reworking his surroundings for its own sake. "There was hardly a week in all the time my father spent on this place during twenty-two years that he did not have something rebuilt or regarded to his intense enjoyment," Homer wrote in 1913.

The estate was also for living and playing:

• a vegetable garden and fruit trees;
• a nine-hole, five-green golf course, one of the earliest irrigated courses in the country;
• a swimming pool behind the Hay Barn Studio in the mid-1890s (its outline still shows behind the Little Studio), and a dammed swimming hole on Blow-Me-Up Brook;
• skating and multi-story toboggan runs in winter.

After a cancer diagnosis in 1900, Saint-Gaudens recovered from surgery at Aspet and made it his year-round home, resolving to spend more time outdoors. Of his first Cornish winter he wrote, "I was happy as a child. I threw myself into northern life and reveled in it." To his staff he said, "Play, play! I wish I played more when I was young. I took things too seriously." As his health failed, he turned to quieter pleasures in the gardens until his death in 1907.

A small orchard beside the Studio of the Caryatids and a toboggan run, both under construction in 1904. Credit: National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.

From memorial to national park

Augusta opened the studios as the Saint-Gaudens Memorial in 1919 and cared for the site until her death in 1926; the Memorial ran it as a museum until 1964. The property became a National Historic Landmark in 1962; President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law authorizing a national historic site in 1964; and it was established in 1965, when the Memorial donated the land, buildings and art to the public.

The apple trees

The apple trees weren't part of the formal design, but they added both beauty and fruit. Three groups grow in the historic core — east of the entry walk, west of the entry walk and west of the Little Studio — all visible in early photographs and on a survey made in December 1903. Photos from 1885 show apple trees already growing southeast of the house; the row west of the Little Studio, six trees one to two inches across in 1903, was probably planted by the family. A larger orchard of apple, cherry and plum trees was gone by the 1920s.

Apple trees growing in the area to the west of the entry walk at Aspet. Illustration from the 2013 CLR. NPS.

Apple trees to the east of the entry walk. Illustration from the 2013 CLR. NPS.

Young apple trees beside the new Little Studio, about 1905. Credit: National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.

Many trees were lost between 1926 and 1965. In the 1970s and 1980s, the park replanted using the 1903 survey. No records name the original varieties, so the park turned to experts at Cornell's Geneva Agricultural Experiment Station, University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, Burford Brothers Nursery and Washington State University.

Apple trees west of the entry drive at Aspet, 2022. NPS.

Apple trees to the east of the entry walk, 2022. NPS.

One tree more than a century old could not be matched to any variety: its DNA isn't in the national repository of apple genetics. That makes it a unique part of the landscape — and potentially valuable to research on New England's heirloom apples and early varieties.

An apple tree grows to the west of the Little Studio, 2012. NPS.

An Existing Conditions Plan in the 2013 Cultural Landscape Report shows the landscape features. Apple trees grow in three areas, outlined in red. NPS.

The park has grown ten grafts from its old trees — five from the Fameuse and five from the unknown variety — which a local orchardist is tending until they can be replanted.

Apple trees west of the Little Studio, 2022. Credit: National Park Service.

Sources

Based on "The Apple Trees at Aspet," Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Tree identifications come from the park's Cultural Landscape Report, Volume III (2013) and later DNA testing. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.