Hello Hive Garden Friends,
It has been a while since I posted in the community. I didn't plant a garden this year so I don't have fun updates. I did go to North Carolina in April and wandered around the Biltmore Gardens so that is what you get to see today!
As we were leaving the house I got some pictures of the exterior, including a couple of gargoyles!
Here is an estate map. The house and gardens are toward the bottom of the map. The grounds of the Biltmore are so big and include Deer Park and Antler Hill toward the top too. If you look closely you will see Chihuly at Biltmore. Yes, I went to Ashville and Biltmore to see Chihuly. I love being a Chihuly Groupie. I get to see so many different cities and gardens!
You might remember from the house tour in the Second Floor Living Hall there were two portraits- one of the building architect, Richard Morris Hunt and one of the landscape architect- Fredrick Law Olmstead.
Olmstead did an amazing job!
The mansion sits on 8,000 acres (3237 ha) and 75 acres (30 ha) are the formal gardens close to the house. The picture on the left provides a visual of the gardens.
There is an Italian Garden, a shrub garden, a spring garden, a walled garden, a rose garden, a conservatory, an azalea garden and a bass pond.
Follow me as we wander around the formal gardens.
As you walk down the stairs you come to a covered path. It is covered with wisteria. It was so beautiful.
Here is a great picture of the house from the other side of the wisteria walk way.
Originally designed for fruits and vegetables as well as flowers, this four-acre formal garden showcases the changing seasons from spring bulbs to autumn mums. The flowerbeds are designed and planted in the "bedding out" style popular in the late 1800s.
We were there in spring so saw some beautiful tulips.
The lower half of the walled garden features roses grown at the end of the nineteenth century plus modern varieties. Our collection of heirloom roses includes some of the same varieties originally purchased for the estate in 1895.
I would love to see and smell the rose garden in full blown. There were no blooms while we were there, so we went right to the conservatory.
At one end of the Walled Garden is the Conservatory, a grand glass-roofed building designed by Biltmore House architect Richard Morris Hunt to nurture exotic species of orchids, palms, and other tropical plants.
Let's go in.
There were so many pretty plants.
And the gorgeous orchids
There was also a very small desert roo...to remind me of home. :)
This 15 acre garden contains one of the country's largest selections of native azaleas, representing a lifetime of work by Chauncey Beadle, a horticulturist who worked at the estate for 60 years and donated his extensive plant collection to Biltmore.
I really noticed azaleas when I went to DC in April 2022 and went to the National Arboretum's Azalea collection. These are beautiful plants that flower in April and color the area with pinks, purples, oranges, whites and reds. It is magical.
Here is a look at the house as we were coming back to it from the gardens. I also got another video of the wisteria walkway. It was so incredibly beautiful
Thanks for joining me on this walk around part of the Biltmore Garden's in Asheville, North Carolina.
