Humble Beginnings
The fence that conceals the backyard of this modest Newport
home is much like a theater curtain. When the gate is opened, the
reveal is dramatic, the scenery spectacular and the illusion of
being transported from one world to another complete.
In 1982, when Ann “Annie” Ritterbusch bought this house, this
theater did not exist. Neither the house, nor the backyard, were
worth bragging about, and she has the pictures to prove it. The
yard, especially, was less than promising, she admits. “It was
weeds, trash and grass,” she says. “Absolutely nothing else.”
Once she finished renovating the house, she took on the yard.
Although Ritterbusch’s father had kept a vegetable garden
when she was a child and her grandmother had gardened, she
was a “total neophyte.”
“I took a big rope and I outlined this wavy garden in the back
in the midst of all the grass,” she says. “Over the years, the
garden grew and the grass disappeared.”
104 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l MAY/JUNE 2020