Chanticleer Garden is a forty-eight-acre

botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

built on the grounds of the Rosengarten estate at 786 Church Road in

Wayne, Pennsylvania Wayne is an unincorporated community centered in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, on the Main Line, a series of highly affluent Philadelphia suburbs located along the railroad tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad and one of the wealthiest areas ...

. Located on Philadelphia's historic

Main Line Mainline, ''Main line'', or ''Main Line'' may refer to: Transportation Railway * Main line (railway), the principal artery of a railway system * Main line railway preservation, the practice of operating preserved trains on an operational railw ...

, Chanticleer retains a domestic scale and is welcoming to visitors for relaxation, walking, and picnics.Jacki Lyden
Chanticleer: A Botanical Distraction From Daily Life
National Public Radio, June 17, 2012. The grounds became open to the public in 1993. Visitors are welcome to tour the estate seasonally, from April through October. The house and grounds were added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1984.

History

The estate was built in 1912 as a summer cottage for Christine Penrose and Adolph G. Rosengarten Sr., the latter of whom was the head of ''Rosengarten & Sons,'' a Philadelphia pharmaceutical manufacturer that his family had founded in 1822 to produce

quinine Quinine is a medication used to treat malaria and babesiosis. This includes the treatment of malaria due to ''Plasmodium falciparum'' that is resistant to chloroquine when artesunate is not available. While sometimes used for nocturnal leg cr ...

. The company later merged with

Merck & Co Merck & Co., Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Rahway, New Jersey, and is named for Merck Group, founded in Germany in 1668, of whom it was once the American arm. The company does business as Merck Sharp ...

in 1927. Upon inheriting the estate, their son, Adolph G. Rosengarten Jr. established a foundation to ensure that Chanticleer would be developed as a public garden. The name Chanticleer is derived from the French word for

rooster The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...

, "''chanticleer" .'' The entrance gate is crested with carved stone

and other references to roosters can be found throughout the estate. Adolph G. Rosengarten Jr. hired Christopher Woods, a native of Britain, to develop the garden. After Rosengarten, Jr.'s death in 1990, Woods became the founding Executive Director and began a radical revision of the garden. He tore down Mr. Rosengarten's stone house to create what is now known as "

The Ruin ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

". Chanticleer consists of a collection of open lawns and large trees. Different sections of the botanical gardens include: * Chanticleer House, the Main House, connecting to the entrance and Teacup Garden, which includes an open air porch, providing a popular spot for visitors to sit and relax * Asian Woods, planting for which began in 1995, after being cleared the previous year, and now hosting a variety of species native to Korea, Japan, and China, but in the style of an American

woodland garden A woodland garden is a garden or section of a garden that includes large trees and is laid out so as to appear as more or less natural woodland, though it is often actually an artificial creation. Typically it includes plantings of flowering shrub ...

* Pond Garden, a large man-made circular pond constructed in the early 1970s, acting as a mirror for the trees that surround it * Teacup Garden, a small-scale garden serving as the entrance courtyard to the property * Minder Woods, a heavily vegetated area with towering red oaks and dark green pines, firs, false cypresses, and hemlocks, accessible via meandering stone paths *Tennis Court Garden, estate's old tennis court, transformed into a dynamic garden * "The Ruin" Garden, the Minder House, built in 1925 and razed in 1999 to offer a series of spaces, pools, and fountains * Gravel Garden, small garden spaces, connected by a series of steps, and home to a variety of species of plants that are rare to the area and climate * Cutting Garden, a traditional cottage garden with a series of arches, fashioned from

rebar Rebar (short for reinforcing bar), known when massed as reinforcing steel or reinforcement steel, is a steel bar used as a Tension (physics), tension device in reinforced concrete and reinforced masonry structures to strengthen and aid the concr ...

and

driftwood __NOTOC__ Driftwood is wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. In some waterfront areas, driftwood is a major nuisance. However, the driftwood provides shelter and fo ...

, providing venues for clematis and annual vines * Vegetable garden, where rustic benches help frame a simple traditional American vegetable garden * Bell's Run, with adjacent woods giving way to undulating lawns, a stream, and a functional 1940s waterwheel *Bell's Woodland, a naturalistic garden devoted to plants indigenous to the eastern U.S. *Bulb Meadow, on a hillside, highlighted by Spanish bluebells and fragile daffodils

The grounds

File:Chanticleer Gardens Asian Woods 2000px.jpg, Asian Woods File:Chanticleer Gardens Rock Garden 2000px.jpg, Ruin and Gravel Garden File:Chanticleer Gardens Main House Croquet Lawn 3008px.jpg, Plants on the Croquet Lawn in front of the main house File:Path, Chanticleer Garden, Pennsylvania, USA.jpg, Garden Path File:Landscape, Chanticleer Garden, Pennsylvania, USA.jpg, Landscape File:Wall of ruins, Chanticleer Garden, Pennsylvania, USA.jpg, Wall of ruin File:Ruin, Chanticleer Garden, Pennsylvania, USA.jpg, Portion of ruin File:Overlook at the Chanticleer house.jpg, Chanticleer House File:Creek Garden at Chanticleer.jpg, Bell's Run

History

The grounds

See also