Southern Plantation Mansions Favorite Garden Plants

Now and Then Plantation-Style Gardens
 
The desired home is purchased or built. It is a large manse with huge columns and center drive. Everything appears very organized. This home just begs for plantation-style landscaping and garden plants. It already bears the hallmarks of landscaping of the early 1800s: a central organizing idea to the external elements of the house. Now to orient the rest of the design to what already exists.

Not all the elements of the plantation are needed in modern times. A modern manse may have horse stables and modest pastures, but most of the rest (agricultural acreage, stock yards and pens, slave quarters) will be discarded. The gardens can consist of any of the six parts historically included: pleasure gardens, kitchen garden, orchard, park, greenhouse and menagerie. Space, degree of complexity desired, expense and amount of help (remember there were slaves on the plantation) will dictate the plan.

What begins to define plantation-style landscape is the alley of trees lining the central drive. These can be live oak, sycamore or sweet gum. Great evergreen walls of yew, cypress or cedar planted perpendicular to the drive will create a dramatic effect when well pruned. Symmetry will follow from these walls into rectangular beds that will be filled with garden plants of bright colors, often edged with boxwood. Hardscape such as brick or stone walls help to further define these beds. The result is a well-organized, intricate set of symmetrical beds fanning out from both sides of the drive, creating a pleasant view for the eye.

It is fortunate that many of the garden plants that were popular in antebellum times have remained so up to this day. Shrubs like camellia, forsythia, mock orange and sweet shrub, as well as perennials like phlox, ardisia, spiderwort and hosta are still available at local nurseries. It is quite possible to create a pleasure garden similar to one of the plantation heyday.

If the owner desires, a greenhouse can form the centerpiece of the backyard gardens, along with a kitchen and herb garden. Crabapple or ornamental pear trees can substitute for the orchard, providing shade and privacy cover. Lawn and trees are the parks. As for the menagerie, many gardeners opt for birds and butterflies gardens, using feeders and birdbaths. A modern plantation owner may feel this fits the bill.

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