Fuller Gardens: A Local’s Guide to North Hampton, NH’s Hidden Gem

We visited Fuller Gardens in No. Hampton, NH, today to see all the roses in bloom. Fuller Gardens is a botanical garden located on the seacoast.

I’ve been visiting Fuller Gardens every summer since 2022, and I’m going to tell you something that sounds like an exaggeration but absolutely isn’t: it gets more beautiful every single time.

Maybe it’s because I go at slightly different times each season and catch a different show, one year it was peak roses, another year I arrived a little late and the perennial borders were the stars. Maybe it’s because I’ve changed. I come with a more educated eye now, noticing color combinations in the perennial beds and mentally filing them away for my own garden. I crouch down to look at succulents in the conservatory, the way I never would have four years ago.

Whatever it is, Fuller Gardens has earned a permanent spot on my summer rotation, and if you live within driving distance of the New Hampshire seacoast, it should be on yours too.

When I read that all the roses were blooming over at Fuller Gardens, I knew I had to get over there as soon as possible! If you can believe it, there are 1,500 rose bushes and 125 different varieties!!!! It’s just amazing!

Fuller Gardens is a botanical garden on the former estate of the Fuller family. Alvan Fuller was a Boston businessman who later became Governor of Massachusetts. He built the estate in the late 1920s as a summer home for his wife and family.

The original home is gone, but the beautiful carriage house remains on the grounds and serves as the backdrop for the gardens.

The gardens cover 3 acres and include formal rose gardens, English perennial beds, a Japanese garden, a conservatory, and beautiful fountains and sculptures.

The Side Garden/ Rose Garden

If you’ve never visited Fuller Gardens before, nothing quite prepares you for the moment you walk through that tunnel of trees, and it opens up into the side garden.

It just opens up. And there they are.

Fifteen hundred rose bushes. One hundred and twenty-five varieties. All of them, on the morning we visited, were in absolute peak bloom.

I’ve seen this garden in different states over the years. I visited once when the roses were just past their best, and most were done blooming, and it was still beautiful. But peak bloom? Peak bloom is something else entirely. Every single row was full and lush, colors stacked on colors, blush pinks and deep crimsons and creamy whites, and that particular coral-orange that roses do better than almost any other flower.

And the fragrance. I forget every single year until I’m standing right in the middle of it, and then I remember, ‘oh, this is what roses are supposed to smell like’. Not the barely-there scent of a grocery store bouquet. The real thing, warm and heady and everywhere at once.

We walked slowly. There was no other way to do it.

One thing I always notice in this garden is the sheer scale of it — the rows stretching out, the hedges framing everything perfectly, the sense that someone has been tending this place with real devotion for a very long time. It doesn’t feel like a public garden. It feels like someone’s dream of a garden, and you’ve been lucky enough to be let in.

If the roses are your only reason for visiting, they are more than enough reason

Once you walk through the tunnel of trees, it opens onto what they call the “side garden,” which is a formal garden with rows and rows of the most amazing roses you have ever seen.

We visited on a Saturday morning, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that even though the parking lot was full, the gardens didn’t seem crowded at all! As you can see from my photos.

I’m sure as the summer goes on and the beach tourist season really kicks in around the coast, it could be busier.

…which meant that we could literally stop and smell all the roses!!

Lydia Fuller Bottomly Garden

This garden space is the newest part of the gardens and was created less than 20 years ago,

At the far end of the side garden, hidden by a row of hedges, is an entrance to the Lydia Fuller Bottomly Garden. It’s an open garden space also used as a wedding venue.

Oh, I would love to see a wedding here, it would be just such a perfect spot! (Come to find out, we missed a wedding that was happening later today!)

One of my favorite features of this garden was the reflecting pool and marble statue at the front.

You can hear the flowing sound of water as you are strolling about. There are fountains and small water features tucked in all over the gardens.

Japanese Garden

After the wide open sun of the rose garden, ducking into the Japanese Garden feels like exhaling.

You pass through an entrance flanked by giant pots of hosta, and within about ten steps, New Hampshire disappears entirely. The path winds under a canopy of unusual trees. I couldn’t tell you what half of them were, and honestly, I didn’t want to stop and look them up. I just wanted to walk slowly and stay in the shade a little longer. Some places are better experienced than catalogued.

At the center of it all is a large pond, ringed with layered plantings of trees and low vegetation, with large koi fish swimming around. We sat for a few minutes and just… stopped. After the sensory overload of fifteen hundred roses in full bloom, the Japanese Garden offers something quieter, a chance to breathe before heading back out into the sunshine.

Don’t rush through it. It’s so tranquil.

The Conservatory

I’ll be honest, when I first visited a few years back, I walked through the conservatory and thought oh, neat, cacti and kept moving.

I don’t do that anymore.

Fuller Gardens’ conservatory is packed with an incredible collection of succulents and cacti, and now that I’ve fallen pretty hard down the succulent rabbit hole myself, I could spend a solid half hour in there just slowly working my way around. The variety is genuinely remarkable, with shapes and textures you won’t find at any garden center, plants that look almost architectural, things that barely seem real.

But the thing that stopped me in my tracks this visit? The staghorn ferns.

I have staghorn ferns at home. Small ones, waiting to get big enough to be mounted on boards, doing their best. The ones at Fuller Gardens are mounted on the wall and absolutely massive, the kind of size that only happens when a plant has been loved and tended for years and years. Honestly, kind of thrilling for this plant nerd!

If you tend to rush through the conservatory on your way back to the roses, slow down. It deserves more than a quick pass-through.

The conservatory is home to every type of succulent and cacti that you can imagine! I have never seen so many unusual plants in one place before…and most definitely have never seen all the strange cacti before!! There were also lovely orchids in bloom as well.

Front Garden

Here’s what nobody tells you about Fuller Gardens: if you time your visit for peak rose season and spend all your time in the side garden, you are missing half the show.

The formal English perennial borders that frame the front garden are extraordinary, and honestly, they’re another thing that I look forward to now. This year, I stopped and didn’t want to leave!

As much as I loved seeing the roses in the side garden, I think that this garden was my favorite space here. Of course, you will find more roses in the center part of the garden, but they are surrounded by stone walking paths that are lined with perennial beds, statues, fountains, and shrubs.

I’m a different gardener than I was when I was first visiting here back in 2022. I grow cut flowers now, I think about color and texture and bloom time in ways I didn’t before, and walking through a well-designed perennial border has become something closer to taking notes than taking a stroll. Fuller Gardens’ borders are basically a masterclass in combination planting, and I was scribbling mental notes and snapping pictures the entire time.

The pairing that stopped me first: bright pink yarrow planted alongside lady’s mantle, its frothy yellow-green flowers spilling over the edge of the border. On paper, that sounds like it shouldn’t work: hot pink and chartreuse, but in person, it was one of those combinations that makes you catch your breath a little. I’ve already decided I’m recreating it.

On some visits to the Fuller Gardens, I’ve been lucky enough to see all the peonies still in bloom. One thing that I appreciate is that the garden is designed to have something blooming all season long, from Spring showy alliums and peonies right through the late season dahlias and sedums.

This is the section of Fuller Gardens I’d point any gardener toward, whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been at it for years. There’s something here for your notebook, no matter where you are. The border plants are labeled, but some of the tags are hidden under the foliage, so come prepared to snap photos of anything you love and identify it later. That’s exactly what I do.

One thing that I read was that the Fullers brought back the garden statues and fountains on their frequent trips to Europe.

There are some magnificent pieces for the art lovers out there as well.

A fun feature was the secret garden pathways hidden by the tall shrubs around the perimeter of the front garden. You weren’t sure if they led anywhere by looking at them!

Plan Your Visit

•Go on a cloudy day if you can. Most of the gardens are in full sun with very little shade, which is gorgeous in person but tricky for photos. An overcast or partly cloudy day makes everything softer and more even; your camera (or your phone) will thank you, and so will your eyes.

•Dress in layers. Fuller Gardens sits right next to the ocean, and you’ll feel it. Even on a warm summer day, there’s almost always a breeze coming off the water, and it can be noticeably cooler than it was when you left your house inland. It was almost 10º warmer when I left my house, and I’m only a few miles away!

•Visit on a weekday if crowds bother you. Weekends get busier, especially once beach season kicks in along the seacoast. A weekday morning is basically paradise.

Timing your visit by what’s blooming:

• June: Peak rose season. The side garden is absolutely at its best.
• July: Roses wind down, but the perennial borders come into their own. Honestly, don’t sleep on this.
• Late summer: Keep an eye out for dahlias later in the season.

Don’t forget to cross the street when you’re done. There’s a beautiful little white chapel right across from the garden with an ocean view that’s the perfect end to your visit.

Why I Keep Coming Back

I’ve been coming to Fuller Gardens every summer for four years now, and I hope to keep coming for many more. It’s ten minutes from my house, it costs less than a lunch out, and it has never once failed to make me feel a bit more relaxed.

That’s the thing about this place. It’s not crowded the way bigger botanical gardens get crowded. It doesn’t have a gift shop you’re funneled through on the way out (although it does have the sweetest gift shop with some nice merch!), or an Instagram backdrop with a line of people waiting to take the same photo. It’s just three acres of extraordinarily well-tended garden on the New Hampshire seacoast, doing its quiet, beautiful thing every summer, whether you show up or not.

If you’ve never been, go. Don’t wait for the perfect day or the perfect time of season- just go, and let whatever’s blooming surprise you. And if you’ve been before and it’s been a while, go back. I promise you’ll see something you missed.

Some places earn a yearly visit. Fuller Gardens has earned mine every single time.

xo, Jennifer

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