Gardens surround and beautify the 1920 mansion. The grassy terrace behind the house looks out over Paradise Pond and the Mill River, beyond the boathouse toward Mount Tom. On the side of the house is an unusually large silverbell, Halesia monticola, which blooms spectacularly in the spring. An Herb Garden was added in 1978, during Jill Ker Conway’s tenure. Gregory Armstrong, then director of the Botanic Garden, designed the garden based on a medieval herb garden. On the slopes below are a series of terraces, home to the Rose Garden in the 1970s through 1990s. 

The garden was redesigned in 2016 to open views of the garden to passers-by. Today, the garden still includes medicinal, culinary, fragrance, and herbs with a household use, designed as a parterre, with hedged, geometrically laid-out beds.  The garden was renamed the Happy Chace ’28 Garden to honor the late Beatrice “Happy” Oenslager Chace ’28, whose daughter and son-in-law, Eliot Chace Nolen ’54 and Roly Nolen, provided support for the renovation project. Visitors can now stroll the fragrant paths and become immersed within the garden, sit and relax in the open air pavilion, and also view the garden from above. 

The house and property, the former home of the Kneeland family, were purchased by Smith College in 1917. Frederick Kneeland, who died in the 1930s, was president of a bank in Northampton, and his wife Adelaide, was among Smith’s first graduates (class of 1879). Her sister, Harriet, was one of the founders of Historic Northampton and wrote many books about houses in the area. Historic Northampton found copies of Adelaide’s garden journals, with illustrations she did and photographs by Harriet. These journals provide valuable information about the garden that was originally there. The original house was torn down in 1918 and replaced in 1920 with the current President’s House.

The statue of St. Francis of Assisi was sculpted and donated by Frances Rich, class of 1931.