Sugar Hill, New Hampshire: The Granite State’s Lupine Capital

Note: The official 2021 Lupine Festival has been canceled due to Covid-19 concerns, but visitors are welcome to safely and respectfully enjoy the display on their own. The Lupine Festival Committee hopes to bring the celebration back in 2022.

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Just northwest of the White Mountains and past a few wrong turns off I-93, you’ll find the tiny town of Sugar Hill, NH. Nestled in among hills and fields, and offering stunning views in almost every direction, the town can only truly be described by one word: picturesque.

Despite its small size, Sugar Hill, NH, is home to several well-known businesses, like Polly’s Pancake Parlor and Harman’s Cheese & Country Store. These places alone make visiting worthwhile, but on this occasion, I was there for one of Sugar Hill’s more seasonal attractions: lupines. The town is known as New Hampshire’s lupine capital, and it hosts a festival dedicated to the plants’ breathtaking blossoms every summer.

In peak lupine season, which tends to be in early June, you’ll see thousands of purple, pink, white, and sky blue lupines crowding the fields that line Sugar Hill’s roads. The flowers, which can grow up to several feet tall, typically last a few weeks in good weather. Even without the flowers, though, the views of the Franconia and Presidential Ranges from Sugar Hill are spectacular.

A Celebration of Lupines

As part of Sugar Hill’s annual Celebration of Lupines, the town holds a handful of lupine-themed events on the first or second weekend of June. During this time, authors, chefs, artisans, and many others present their works at locations all over town. If you can’t make it to Sugar Hill on that specific weekend, you can still get your fill of lupines from public spaces around town, where paths are mowed through some of the largest lupine fields.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to make it to the Celebration of Lupines weekend, so I instead set out to discover Sugar Hill on my own time. My tour of Sugar Hill began with breakfast at Polly’s Pancake Parlor, where I filled up on delicious pancakes. The visit to Polly’s was so good, it warranted it’s own separate post, which you can read here: Polly’s Pancake Parlor | Breakfast in the White Mountains.

St. Matthew’s Chapel

I next stopped at St. Matthew’s Chapel — about half a mile up the road from Polly’s — and I could instantly see why this church claims to be among New England’s most-photographed. The small summer chapel was built in 1893 and today serves a congregation of only 15 or so people. But don’t take that to mean that St. Matthew’s has been forgotten about: weddings and other community events take place here in the summer, and the chapel catches the eye of every photographer passing by. I was particularly lucky, as I happened to pull into the driveway at nearly the same time as one of the parishioners, who kindly offered me a peek inside the building.

To the surprise of no one, St. Matthew’s is just as pretty on the inside as it is on the outside. The multicolored boards that make up the walls and ceiling of the chapel give it a rustic and traditional look, and the large, stained glass windows act as beautiful accents.

Sugar Hill Sampler

My next stop was the Sugar Hill Sampler — a gift shop and museum housed in a huge, 18^th century barn overlooking fields of lupines. Here, I began my walk through the flowers, taking in the stunning mountain views and poetry of the “Inspirational Walk.”

I was lucky enough to be in town on a gorgeous — though quite warm — day, which resulted in me taking many more photos of the lupines than I really care to admit. (It’s hard to resist when everything around you is just so photogenic!)

As I crouched down to take yet another picture of the flowers, my traveling companion shouted “Look!” and I turned around to catch a glimpse of a deer leaping through a nearby field.

Downtown Sugar Hill, NH

After meandering through the lupines for probably longer than necessary, I continued on to Sugar Hill’s main drag just a few minutes away. Here, you’ll find the town’s quaint little post office, as well as the library, town offices, and Harman’s Cheese & Country Store. Harman’s may be tiny, but it’s home to some of the best cheddar cheese in the state — or maybe the world, as they claim — which they sell more than ten tons of every year.

Just One Last Stop…

I was nearing the end of my Sugar Hill, NH, tour, but I couldn’t resist stopping just once more at a clearing I had spied on my way into town. The field’s vast swaths of yellow buttercups had caught my eye, and their brightness contrasted nicely with the deep pink and purple lupines that also saturated the area.

Although the lupines in Sugar Hill had yet to start turning, the ones in my own garden had. Here are a couple photos of their fresh seedpods, so you can see what the plant looks like post-blossom. You may think that they resemble pea pods — and you’d be right! Lupines and pea plants are both members of the legume family and are distantly related.

After spending the day wandering through fields of purple lupines backdropped by impressive mountain vistas, I left with a full camera memory card, only one tick sighting (miraculously), and an appreciation for all that the tiny northern treasure of Sugar Hill had to offer during peak lupine season. Have you ever been to Sugar Hill, NH? This post was first published in 2016 and has been updated.

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