Roseland Cottage

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Roseland Cottage is a historic house located in Woodstock, Connecticut. The house is owned by Historic New England, a non-profit organization who preserves the historical value of the house and operates it as a museum.

Roseland Cottage was built in 1846 in the Gothic Revival style. It was the summer home of Henry Chandler Bowen and family. The entire complex, with a boxwood parterre garden, an icehouse, garden house and a carriage barn with a private bowling alley, reflects the principles of writer and designer Andrew Jackson Downing. In his widely popular books, Downing stressed practicality along with the picturesque, and offered detailed instructions on room function, sanitation, and landscaping.

The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. Roseland Cottage is one of eleven historic sites that have joined to form Connecticut Historic Gardens. Comprising cottage gardens and formal gardens of many tastes and styles, Connecticut Historic Gardens promotes the appreciation of historic gardens throughout the state. At Roseland Cottage, visitors can stroll among the twenty-one flowerbeds bordered in boxwood hedge and planted with more than 4,000 annuals to create ribbons of color, as originally designed in 1850. Visitors are encouraged to bring a picnic, relax on the grounds, and enjoy the gardens just as Bowen's family and guests did more than one hundred and fifty years ago.