Seeking Eden: A Collection of Georgia’s Historic Gardens

Seeking Eden promotes an awareness of, and appreciation for, Georgia’s rich garden heritage. Updated and expanded here are the stories of nearly thirty designed landscapes first identified in the early twentieth-century publication Garden History of Georgia, 1733-1933. Seeking Eden records each garden’s evolution and history as well as each garden’s current early twenty-first-century appearance, as beautifully documented in photographs. Dating from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, these publicly and privately owned gardens include nineteenth-century parterres, Colonial Revival gardens, Country Place-era landscapes, rock gardens, historic town squares, college campuses, and an urban conservation garden.

Seeking Eden explores the significant impact of the women who envisioned and nurtured many of these special places; the role of professional designers, including J. Neel Reid, Philip Trammel Shutze, William C. Pauley, Robert B. Cridland, the Olmsted Brothers, Hubert Bond Owens, and Clermont Lee; and the influence of the garden club movement in Georgia in the early twentieth century.

FEATURED GARDENS:
Andrew Low House and Garden Savannah
Ashland Farm Flintstone
Barnsley Gardens Adairsville
Barrington Hall and Bulloch Hall Roswell
Battersby-Hartridge Garden Savannah
Beech Haven Athens
Berry College: Oak Hill and House o’ Dreams Mount Berry
Bradley Olmsted Garden Columbus
Cator Woolford Gardens Atlanta
Coffin-Reynolds Mansion Sapelo Island
Dunaway Gardens Newnan vicinity
Governor’s Mansion Atlanta
Hills and Dales Estate LaGrange
Lullwater Conservation Garden Atlanta
Millpond Plantation Thomasville vicinity
Oakton Marietta
Rock City Gardens Lookout Mountain
Salubrity Hall Augusta
Savannah Squares Savannah
Stephenson-Adams-Land Garden Atlanta
Swan House Atlanta
University of Georgia: North Campus, the President’s House and Garden, and the Founders Memorial Garden Athens
Valley View Cartersville vicinity
Wormsloe and Wormsloe State Historic Site Savannah vicinity
Zahner-Slick Garden Atlanta

Staci L. Catron (Author)
STACI L. CATRON is the director of the Cherokee Garden Library, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, and a past president of the Southern Garden History Society.

Mary Ann Eaddy (Author)
MARY ANN EADDY retired from the Historic Preservation Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources where she worked first as manager of the technical services unit and then as special assistant to the director. She also taught a graduate course in preservation planning in the Heritage Preservation Program at Georgia State University.