The Green Animals Topiary Garden used to be just a part of a countryside property that features a white wooden home, a vegetable garden, a grazing land and farm outbuildings. In 1872, the same land was bought by Thomas Brayton, the treasurer of Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Massachusetts.

Year 1905 until 1945, gardeners Joseph Carreiro and his son-in-law George Mendonca supervised the property. During this period, they were also able to create the topiaries that amounted to eighty pieces of animals, birds, shapes and other designs made from English boxwood, California privet and yew. Since its creation, it has become the oldest and most northern topiary garden in America. Being named by Thomas Brayton’s daughter “green animals” because of the number of animal topiaries, the property also served as her permanent home from 1939 to 1972. It is now being supervised by The Preservation Society of Newport County.