GPOD on the Road: Chanticleer in Late Summer

13.09.2024 - 10:02 / finegardening.com / GPOD Contributor

Happy Friday GPODers!

We’ve got another submission from friend-of-the-blog, Carla Zambelli Mudry. However, we’re not getting an update from her garden in Malvern, Pennsylvania this time. Instead, Carla is sharing her recent trip to Chanticleer Garden.

I don’t just love to garden, I love to visit gardens.

Yesterday I visited a favorite spot fairly local to me, Chanticleer Garden in Wayne. It’s a wonderful tapestry of gardens within a garden and well worth a visit. It’s located in suburban Philadelphia.

Chanticleer was an estate. The Chanticleer estate dates from the early 20th-century, when land along the Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad was developed for summer homes to escape the heat of Philadelphia. Adolph Rosengarten Sr. and his wife Christine chose the Wayne-St. Davids area to build their country retreat.

In 1924 it became more than a summer home, it became a permanent year-round home and eventually the children of the Rosengarten‘s had homes of their own on the property.

In 1990, Adolf Rosengarten Jr. left the property in his estate to be turned into pleasure gardens. The subsequently formed Chanticleer Foundation oversees it all. It’s an interesting place and they offer classes at different times of the year on occasion, which are very expensive but worth it. The gardens are always worth seeing at any time they are open. You can have a membership or you can pay to go as you wish.

I forget exactly how many people and horticulturalists are employed, but this is an amazing place and well worth a visit. One of my favorite things are the aspen trees, because they make the coolest noise in the breeze.

They have some magnificent old growth trees, and very interesting gardens and wonderful furniture