The Notlim Estate at 291 Hillside Street - Garden of Carol Stocker & Robert Mussey

Notlim was landscaped by Ernest W. Bowditch, whose work includes The Breakers and other Newport estates. The Notlim Estate (that's Milton spelled backwards!) was created in 1911 by Hugh Clifford Gallagher when he was president of the Walter Baker Chocolate Company, Milton's largest employer. Today, 291 Hillside Street is the residence of Carol Stocker and Robert Mussey. Stocker, a longtime garden writer for the Boston Globe and three-times named Best Newspaper Garden Writer in America, admits she fell hard for gardening thirty years ago and she has made “a career of it.” She has spent decades fine-tuning her cottage style garden with its stunning drifts and massings, set off by a picket fence, gates, and the surrounding farm structures of the former estate. With careful emphasis on a composition of plants epitomizing a “wild garden,” the garden has delightful surprises at every turn such as a gazebo surrounded by a perennial border and split rail fence, a climbing rose bush taking over a trellis, or clematis growing up the grape arbor. Her garden includes many rare plants and a century old antique apple orchard of full size Northern Spy trees, now in their senescence.

When Mr. Gallagher assembled Notlim, he purchased parcels of land that already contained three old houses, including 291 Hillside Street (built in 1845). Instead of tearing them down, he fixed them up and installed a series of employees including chauffeurs and gardeners in these old structures. It is thanks to Gallagher that these old buildings from a previous agrarian era survived into the twentieth century. He then built two magnificent Colonial Revival style mansions, one for himself located at 303 Hillside (not on the tour) and one, at 287 Hillside Street (not on the tour) for his daughter Ruth Everett Gallagher and her husband, Judge Frederick Chase. Judge Chase ran the estate until his death in 1977, after which the land was subdivided and the five houses on the property were sold to four separate families. But no new houses were added and the estate's scenic century old landscape remains largely intact.

Directions: From US Route 1/I-93, take Exit 5B west to Route 28. From Route 28/Randolph Avenue, turn west onto Hillside Street. Travel 0.7 mile to # 291 on the right.

Open Days 2018: June 9
Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Admission to this garden is $7 for members and nonmembers without tickets purchased in advance.

Buy discounted admission tickets in advance! They can be used at most Open Days to make garden visiting easier.
Nonmembers get 6 visits for the price of 5 with advanced ticket book purchase.
Members get 50% off ONLY by purchasing ticket books in advance.