Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
One of the landscape architects behind Boothbay’s famed botanical gardens also designed the landscaping for a $9.2 million summer home for sale in Castine.
The 3.8-acre property for sale is known as “Blue Ridge.” It is a shingle-style cottage perched on a cliff overlooking Penobscot Bay, close to Castine’s Dyce Head Lighthouse. Its gardens were designed by stone master and landscape architect Bruce John Riddell, who has helped craft public gardens including the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.
“The combination of the setting and the house and the landscaping is really one of a kind,” listing agent Karen Koos said. “The location is phenomenal.”
The owners are Kenny and Lynn Brown, a couple originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, who summered in Maine for many years before building Blue Ridge, their dream summer home, in 2005. They gave Riddell complete control over their gardens, only asking him to incorporate some Virginia plants alongside ones from Maine, according to a 2017 Boston.com profile.
The couple put a lot of time and attention into the property, said Koos, the designated broker-owner of Castine-based Saltmeadow Properties Real Estate. They were inspired by the “rusticator” cottages of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and past generations of people who would come up from steamships from Boston and beyond to spend the summer in Maine.
“There’s cherry floors throughout the property, there’s beautiful stonework, there’s a gorgeous turret on the water side of the house, and the lower level porch has stone columns that support that,” Koos said of the homages to those old cottages. “It’s beautifully done.”
The home has around 5,500 square feet of living space and offers expansive ocean views. It counts coffered ceilings, fireplaces, a large media room, detached 2-bay garage and a spacious chef’s kitchen including granite countertops among its attractive features.
There is lots of space to entertain indoors and out, which is something the owners have really valued about the property, Koos said. Rooms are large, and the interior flows nicely to the exterior. The curated gardens are private and pretty to walk through. With six bedrooms and eight bathrooms, there’s plenty of room for grandkids and guests.
The property is located on a private lot by the sea, but it’s close to the golf, tennis and yacht club, as well as the shops and restaurants of Castine, which was voted the “best small town in the Northeast” this year by USA Today. Most summer residents fly into the airport in Bangor or the one in Trenton, near Bar Harbor.
Though Blue Ridge could be a fabulous year-round home that was only listed for sale Thursday, Koos expects it’ll continue to attract summer residents.
“I think it will be predominantly seasonal; that’s how the current owners have used it,” she said.
