In 1897 Miss Isabel Weld Perkins married diplomat Larz Anderson, whose parents had a beautiful home on 16th Street in Washington DC. In 1899, Larz and Isabel purchased the 64 acre estate of her cousin, William Weld, in Brookline, Massachusetts, overlooking downtown Boston.  In 1901, Isabel hired the famous architect Charles Adams Platt to design a garden for the estate, which she named ‘Weld’ after her grandfather. Construction began at the same time as Anderson House on Massachusetts Avenue was taking shape. This garden was a sensation and soon became one of the most published and influential landscapes of the early 20th century—the formal gardens by which all others would be judged.

Platt’s commission for the Weld garden was unusual as it involved an existing house. In most of his work, Platt designed both house and garden, with perfect integration between outdoors and indoors.  The Anderson garden at Weld was further unusual in that it was not visible from the house, but rather accessed across the bowling green that fronted the house, and thence by paths that approached the garden from the side.  The main garden was built on a terrace pushed out from the hillside, and featured a center panel of grass, flanked by parterres, and surrounded by terraces that effected changes in levels and vistas. A king’s ransom in antique Italian sarcophagi, urns and columns ornamented the garden. Accompanying the main garden were the usual complement of cutting garden, a rock garden, greenhouses, nursery gardens, wild gardens, and an allee. At the base of the hill lay a private polo field, and between it and the main gate was an ornamental lake, with bridges and a domed temple at its head.  In a generous civic gesture, the high stucco wall that shielded the estate from the road was pierced with an elegant wrought iron screen to give passers by a vista of this Arcadian scene.