If you have ever visited Potter Place, you will have seen the knoll next to Richard and Sally Potter’s gravestones. If you walk to the top of this knoll to look over the fence, you will see a mystical shade garden inside the old cellar hole from Potter’s original homestead. The entrance to the garden is just off Cilleyville Road., and you might miss it if you didn’t know to look for it.
Once you have been in the Secret Garden, you will always remember it because it is a magical place. As you stand inside the garden and look around at the beautiful plants and sculptures, you are surrounded by a stone foundation. How did this garden come to be? Who created it? I talked to Luan Clark and found out the story of the Secret Garden of Potter Place.
Richard Potter was a celebrated 19th-century ventriloquist and magician. He is known as the first black celebrity in America, and he and his wife Sally lived in Andover from 1815 to 1835. They built their home on the top of a knoll, in what was later named Potter Place in his honor.
In the Andover Historical Society archives, there is a photograph of Potter’s house, from the early 1900s after it had been renovated by the Downes family. Unfortunately, the Downes’ house burned to the ground in 1923. Today, there is no house on the plot of land, but you can still visit the original cellar hole of Richard Potter’s home, which was magically transformed into a shade garden. Here is how it happened.
In the early 2000s, Kenneth Reid and Robert Hamilton moved to Andover and quickly became a part of the Andover Historical Society. Pat Cutter was the president at that time, and she asked Ken and Bob to help revitalize the old JC Emons Store and Post Office, which are a part of the AHS museum on Depot Street.
As a part of their work, they redecorated and “re-established” the store, to make it feel more historic. If you visit the Emons store today, you might feel like you’ve stepped back in time.
While volunteering for the AHS, Ken kept thinking about the cellar hole of Richard Potter’s home and how it might make a good spot for a shade garden. Ken had grown up on a farm and as he liked to say, “ I never quite got the dirt from under my fingernails”. Later in life he studied gardening in Pennsylvania and learned the art of transforming roofless stone farmhouses into sheltered gardens.
He recalled in a letter to the AHS that he tried to ignore the idea but it kept coming back to him until he finally embraced the challenge to transform the cellar hole. At that point, the cellar hole was far from “garden ready.” In fact, it was packed full with rotting leaves, dead trees and branches, old rusty car parts, glass bottles and cans, and all sorts of rubble.
Ken’s creative vision was so strong that he and Bob kept working on emptying out the cellar hole, repairing the stone walls, and replacing the floor with fresh soil. The cleaning-out process took almost two years to complete.
Once the interior of the cellar hole was prepared, they began planting shade plants. They received a donation of two large concrete planters which they placed in the garden as well. Today you can see beautiful plants in the garden which includes a Japanese red maple, hostas, periwinkle, impatiens, dwarf irises, barrenwort, ferns, begonias, bunchberry (ground cover dogwood), lily of the valley, foam flower, dead nettle (lamium), and astilbe.
Bob passed away in 2018, and Ken passed away in 2020, leaving a legacy of plants behind. Now the Secret Garden is maintained by AHS volunteers and members of the Andover Historical Society’s Landscape Committee, led by landscape architect Bill Hoffman.
These volunteers tend all the plantings around the Lull house and the JC Emons Store and Post Office. They also maintain the Potters’ cemetery plot and the new native garden on the side of the knoll, which was planted by Spring Ledge Farm volunteers.
This summer, the AHS along with the Black Heritage Trail of NH established a plaque for Richard Potter, which places Potter Place on the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire. The AHS also commissioned a plaque to be installed in the Secret Garden in memory of Bob Hamilton and Ken Reid. The Secret Garden stone was donated by the Currier family from the stone wall of their four-generation historic farm on Beech Hill Road in Andover. The stone for the Potter plaque was donated by the Schust family from their historic farmland in Potter Place.
The site for the Secret Garden plaque was carefully selected by members of the AHS. Luan Clark and Bill Hoffman did the final layout plan for the rock before the installers came.
On August 4, John A. Kaufhold of Peterborough Marble and Granite Works spent the day in Potter Place and installed both plaques for the Andover Historical Society. When the Secret Garden plaque was installed, speckled sunlight lit up the text for all to see: “ In appreciation of Kenneth Reid and Robert Hamilton – Dedicated Volunteers of the Andover Historical Society – whose vision and hard work created an enchanting Secret Garden in this tranquil historic spot.”
Secret Garden Fund
In 2020, the AHS set up the Secret Garden Fund to raise money for the continued maintenance and updates to the garden and surrounding grounds. The AHS has received several donations in their honor. This fund helped pay for the commemorative plaque as well. If anyone is interested in volunteering or donating toward the upkeep of this special garden, please contact the AHS, or visit their website at AndoverHistory.org/make-a-donation/.
The Andover Historical Society Museum and Freight House at Depot Street will be open through Columbus Day Weekend. Visiting hours are Saturdays from 10 AM to 3 PM and Sundays from noon to 3 PM. The Freight Shed will be open on Saturdays from 10 AM to 2 PM. The Little Red Schoolhouse on Tucker Mountain Road in East Andover will be open the second Sunday of the month, June through Columbus Day Weekend, from 1 to 3 PM.