Magnolia Gets National Recognition

Tom Johnson, Magnolia Plantation and Gardens’ executive director, said Monday that the Travel and Leisure magazine’s designation as one of the America’s Most Beautiful Gardens affirms that “we are on the right path to restoring the gardens to the Rev. John Grimké Drayton’s vision when he began to expand the gardens in the 1840s.
“We pride ourselves as being America’s last large-scale romantic-style garden,” Johnson said. “Unlike most of America’s gardens, which are formal and seek to control nature, Magnolia cooperates with nature to create a tranquil landscape like Eden where humanity and nature are in harmony.”
The recognition from Travel & Leisure Magazine adds to a growing list of accolades Magnolia has received in recent years, including a Garden of Excellence Award from the International Camellia Society.
Magnolia is the only South Carolina garden named to the Travel and Leisure list of America’s Most Beautiful Gardens.
This is what the magazine said about Magnolia: “Some sections of this family- owned garden have remained unchanged for more than 300 years, bearing witness to the property’s transition from a slave-holding plantation to a Lowcountry tourist attraction. The gardens’ Romantic-style design invites an escape from the everyday, into a world of azalea-lined pathways, sprawling live oaks, and cypress- tupelo swamps patrolled by alligators and egrets.”