Philly’s Claim to Gardening Fame

I just learned this factoid in June despite my hundreds of visits with Philadelphia area in-laws. I am thrilled that 38 gardens within 30 miles of the city are open to the public – more than half of them free to visit.

In 1989, these gardens united as the Philadelphia Area Gardens. Their joint marketing campaign now draws more than 2 million annual visitors. In 2013, the American Public Gardens Association designated the region as America’s Garden Capital for its horticultural history and number of gardens. That designation led to the 2019 debut of the America’s Garden Capital passport at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

Over the decades, I have visited Longwood Gardens and a few other gardens near Philadelphia. But, I did not realize the scope of the region’s horticulture scene until picking up a pocket-sized green passport this spring. I discovered this free booklet at the 35-acre Chanticleer garden in Wayne.

Norfolk Master Gardener Robin Franklin grew up in Philadelphia in a horticulture-loving family that lived near Morris Arboretum at the University of Pennsylvania. So, she has long known her home region boasts “so many amazing gardens it is hard not to stumble upon them. You could spend a month touring all of them.”

For visitors like me, the passport simplifies garden touring. It highlights each garden on a page that lists its size, admission details, key features, and physical and web addresses and also includes a color photo. The passport opens with a map of gardens, which are indexed by location -- Brandywine Valley, Bucks County, Main Line and Delaware County, Montgomery County, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. In the back are blank squares to stamp and date garden visits.

The oldest garden is Bartram’s Garden, founded in 1728 by Quaker botanist John Bartram, a pioneer in collecting native plants and importing ornamentals. This 45-acre Philadelphia botanical garden and public park along the Schuylkill River is a National Historic Landmark. It is the oldest botanical garden in the United State and contains the oldest living ginkgo tree in North America – one planted in 1785.

In June, my family and I picked two Main Line passport gardens to explore -- Chanticleer in Wayne and Appleford in Villanova.  Chanticleer, which Robin calls her favorite Philly area garden, started as a family estate in 1913 and opened to the public in 1993. It bills itself as a 35-acre pleasure garden with numerous microclimates ranging from an arid gravel garden to Asian woods, a pond garden and a meadow of wheat accented by red poppies and blue bachelor buttons. Handy plant lists in each specialty garden inspire visitors to gain ideas for enhancing their home gardens.