Southern Style | Helen Yoest | Elizabethan Gardens Delight Visitors

Elizabethan Gardens Delight Visitors

By Helen Yoest

Built on the site of the first English colony, The Elizabethan Gardens in Manteo, NC, on the Roanoke Sound are unique in the New World. By maintaining the authenticity of 16th century England, the gardens offer a wide appeal to horticulturists, nature lovers, history buffs and culture seekers.
Nestled under a canopy of southern magnolias, pines, dogwoods and ancient live oak trees, the garden was originally funded more than 50 years ago by the Garden Club of North Carolina and designed and built by M. Umberto Innocenti and Richard Webel.
Set in 10 acres of gardens designed with a mixture of formal and naturalized areas, a visit to The Elizabethan Gardens is very much like touring a great English estate. The formal areas include an entrance garden designed with parterres of clipped boxwood and filled with annuals to reflect the seasons. The Shakespearean Herb Garden is filled with culinary, medicinal and sweet smelling herbs.

The popular Sunken Gardens feature a magnificent antique fountain donated by the late Honorable John Hay Whitney, former ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, and Mrs. Whitney. The fountain dictated the design of a formal parterre pattern of clipped boxwood and yaupon hollies.
Surrounding the fountain is a circle of eight crepe myrtles, pollarded each year to maintain their size with the ends of each branch forming gnarled orbs that have become individual works of art. During the summer, their watermelon-colored flowers are dramatic and striking.
The Garden’s naturalized areas are softened by fallen leaves and pine needles with walls of azaleas and camellias. A summer stroll reveals climbing hydrangeas gracing the Gatehouse wall in the courtyard, offering a sweet scent that wafts throughout the area. Nearby, lacecap and mophead hydrangea blooms stand out in splendid blue. Naturally pink cultivars abound, with the white blooms of oak leaf hydrangeas fading to a rosy pink.

Lining the Great Lawn are daylilies that provide several weeks of delightful color. Perennial sunflowers, rain lilies, Stokes Asters, gardenias and coneflowers contribute to the effect. Natural paths lead guests to the octagonal shaped Gazebo built to period specifications with a thatched roof overlooking the Roanoke Sound.
The centerpiece of the Garden is a statue of Virginia Dare, sculpted in Italy in 1859 by American sculptor Maria Louise Lander, depicting the first child born of English parents in the New World as a young girl gazing over the famous settlement that disappeared into history.

The Elizabethan Gardens
Open year-round seven days a week
Closing times vary with season

1411 National Park Drive
Manteo, NC 27954
252-473-3234
www.eliabethangardens.org

Self-guided tour open 7 days a week year-round

The Gatehouse Gift Shop offers unique items and plants propagated in greenhouses located on the grounds of the Garden.