Reynolda Gardens in spring Reynolda Gardens are located off Reynolda Road, adjacent to the Reynolda campus of

Wake Forest University Wake Forest University is a private research university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded in 1834, the university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina. The Reynolda Campus, the un ...

and the

Reynolda House The Reynolda House Museum of American Art displays a premiere collection of United States, American art ranging from the colonial period to the present. Built in 1917 by Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband R. J. Reynolds, founder of the R. J ...

Winston-Salem Winston-Salem is a city and the county seat of Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States. In the 2020 census, the population was 249,545, making it the second-largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region, the 5th most populous city in N ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

. The gardens are open daily with free admission. The gardens were originally part of a large country estate and farm (1067 acres) created by tobacco magnate

R. J. Reynolds Richard Joshua Reynolds (July 20, 1850 – July 29, 1918) was an American businessman and founder of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. The son of a tobacco farmer, he worked for his father and attended Emory & Henry College from 1868 to 1870 ...

and his wife Katharine Smith Reynolds between 1906 and 1923. In 1913 the

Lord & Burnham Lord & Burnham was a noted American boiler and greenhouse manufacturer, and builders of major public conservatories in the United States. History The company began in 1849 when Frederick A. Lord, a carpenter, started building wood and glass gree ...

greenhouse was built to serve the family and farm, and to produce flowers commercially. Landscape architect Thomas W. Sears (1880–1966) designed the formal garden for Mrs. Reynolds, starting in 1915. After the death of Mrs. Reynolds (then remarried as Mrs. Johnston) in 1924, most of the property was gradually sold or given away, including a gift of to

Wake Forest College Wake Forest University is a private research university in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Founded in 1834, the university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina. The Reynolda Campus, the un ...

in the late 1940s for its Winston-Salem campus. In a series of gifts from 1958 to 1962, their daughter Mary Reynolds Babcock established Reynolda Gardens by donating its property to the college. In 1995 the college and the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

performed extensive historic reconstruction to return the garden to its original design. Today the gardens include of woodlands, fields, wetlands, and a formal garden with greenhouse. Two acres of the formal gardens comprise the Greenhouse Gardens (designed 1917, 1920, 1931) which centers around a sunken garden divided into four quadrants, with grass lawns, border plantings,

rose A rose is either a woody perennial flowering plant of the genus ''Rosa'' (), in the family Rosaceae (), or the flower it bears. There are over three hundred species and tens of thousands of cultivars. They form a group of plants that can be ...

gardens, theme gardens, specimen trees, and boxwood hedges, as well as tea-houses, fountains, and pergolas. The other half contains the Fruit, Cut Flower, and Nicer Vegetable Garden (1921), which grows

vine A vine (Latin ''vīnea'' "grapevine", "vineyard", from ''vīnum'' "wine") is any plant with a growth habit of trailing or scandent (that is, climbing) stems, lianas or runners. The word ''vine'' can also refer to such stems or runners themselv ...

vegetable Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems, ...

s, climbing

s, and espaliered

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

trees. The entire property also includes a 3/4-mile woodland trail, as well as a slightly longer perimeter trail (1.5 miles).

See also