What Will It Take To Sustain Kingston’s Not⁠–⁠So⁠–⁠Secret Garden?

Betty and Tony Faella

URI’s first botany professor, Lorenzo Kinney Sr., planted the first trees on the Kinney Azalea Gardens property nearly 100 years ago. His family—with strong Rhody ties in each generation—has cultivated and welcomed the public to the gardens continuously since then. Now, they hope public investment will preserve it in perpetuity.

Come mid-May, it’s hard to find a showier or busier venue than Kingston’s Kinney Azalea Gardens.

Thousands visit the gardens annually, enjoying the hospitality of a family who, for four generations, has encouraged the public to enjoy their gardens for free. At peak bloom, the gardens hum with plant, animal, and human activity: preschoolers at play, plein air painters at easels, students and scientists at work. In the gardens, admiration finds many forms of expression.

In the 1920s, Lorenzo Kinney Sr., URI’s first botany professor, began planting conifers on the 6 acres of land that comprised his son’s Kingstown Road property. Lorenzo Kinney Jr. ’14, Hon. ’92, introduced azaleas, a tribute to his wife, Elizabeth, a Virginia native. Rhode Island’s climate was thought too cold to support azaleas, but Kinney Jr. prevailed. He opened the Kinney Azalea Gardens to the public in 1956.

Kinney Jr.’s property eventually passed to his daughter, Elizabeth “Betty” Kinney Faella, M.S. ’67, and her husband, Antonio “Tony” Faella ’51, M.S. ’62. Under the Faella’s care, the gardens have grown to almost 16 acres sporting 1,000 cultivars—plants grown through selective breeding. “When the gardens bloom,” says Betty Faella, “they are truly spectacular. We want everyone to enjoy them.”

Helen Northup ’84, granddaughter of Lorenzo Kinney Jr. ’14.

“There is a peace here and a special connection with nature and beauty. Our family wants these gardens to continue. We want them open to the public.”

­—Helen Faella Northup ’84

Since 2022, the couple’s daughter, Helen Faella Northup ’84, has run the gardens with her husband, Jim Northup ’83. Helen Northup established the nonprofit Friends of the Kinney Faella Gardens in 2022. She hopes to hire an executive director with the fundraising skills necessary to make the gardens financially self-sustaining.

“There is a peace here and a special connection with nature and beauty,” Helen Northup says. “Our family wants these gardens to continue. We want them open to the public.”

But the cost of maintaining the gardens is substantial. Recently, the family received an estimate of $80,000 for tree removal; 42 ash trees need to be removed due to ash borer disease. Small donations and plant sales aren’t enough, Northup says.

For 46 years, horticulturist Susan Gordon, M.S. ’86, Ph.D. ’95, managed the Kinney Azalea Gardens.

Gordon, who retired in 2024, recalls, “I was 16 and it was my third or fourth day working in the garden. Lorenzo [Lorenzo Kinney Jr.] had four white azalea flowers in his hands, four different cultivars, and he said, ‘Well, Sue, can you tell the difference between these?’”

Another 16-year-old might have been intimidated. Not Gordon.

“Lorenzo and I became friends—mentor and devotee—and that was it,” Gordon says. Together, the two cultivated a landscape capable of meeting nature’s challenges.

All of Kingston Hill sits on crushed glacial till—on soils that don’t drain well—making them ideal for holding moisture. Native annuals and perennials—weeds to most Americans—feed native insects (thus supporting the food web) and shade the soil, helping to keep it moist. There’s no need to haul out the hose if you understand the environment.

“If we emulate the way our environment works,” says Gordon, “we don’t have to water anywhere near as much.”

The Kinney-Gordon method was to leave leaf litter, logs, and fallen limbs. Trees were removed only when they posed a hazard. Insecticides, fertilizers, and irrigation weren’t introduced to the garden either.

“The gardens were considered a living ecosystem. Human needs and financial opportunity did not supersede the system’s health,” Gordon says. “My fondest hope for the gardens is that they and East Farm remain open space. The garden’s contiguity to URI’s East Farm and to the Audubon birdbanding station make it ecologically valuable.” (The Audubon birdbanding station is the Kingston Wildlife Research Station, an Audubon Society of Rhode Island property that is managed by URI.)

The three parcels contain upland hardwood forest, seasonally wet woodland, a vernal pool, a pond, a stream, and wet and upland fields. “This is all plunked in the middle of a high-density, mixed-use setting,” Gordon says. “The gardens serve as a valuable lesson in how a human-friendly landscape can also support biodiversity.”

Today, the gardens continue to utilize the methods established by Kinney and Gordon. But they’re focused on welcoming and educating visitors and helping them understand why they employ those methods.

For example, Northup says they want people to understand why they leave an understory to shade the roots, and why, when they must take down a tree, they leave the trunk. “We’re taking off the dangerous part, but we’re leaving some of the trunk for the animals,” she says.

Helen Northup envisions the gardens’ offerings expanding to include a native plant area and a children’s garden. In 2024, the nonprofit held its first big event, a Garden Stroll and Fancy Hat Contest, an ode to the Kinney and Faella families’ legendary tea parties.

“My grandfather always had an Azalea Tea in May when the garden was in peak bloom,” Northup says. “Women wore dresses; men would come in suits. My grandmother would have her lady friends pouring tea and punch, and my grandfather would invite guests outside to stroll the gardens.”

Such public engagement is key.

“We need community support to carry this forward,” Northup says. “With that, the gardens will continue to flourish and provide enjoyment to visitors for generations to come.”

—Marybeth Reilly-McGreen

PHOTOS: NORA LEWIS