Airlie Gardens | Wilmington, N. C.

April 2024 found Society members in North Carolina’s main port city, home of the Battleship North Carolina, and for a few weeks each year, the state’s azalea capitol…Wilmington. The meeting and its setting received both previews and reviews in Magnolia,* these articles touching on the region’s prehistoric developments as well as the town’s history beginning with the colonial era. A standout part of the story was the creation of Airlie Gardens.

Readers may recall that Airlie became a public garden only in the 1990s, but its origins date to the 1880s as the home of Sarah Wharton Green and her husband the rice milling entrepreneur, railroad investor, and ship builder, Pembroke Jones. Though social leaders in Wilmington the couple also acquired residences in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island, places where the “light fantastic” could be “tripped” even more grandly than in North Carolina. 

They continued to embrace their Tarheel roots, however, visiting Wilmington regularly and remaining involved in city affairs. As well, their love of gardens was allowed full expression there, and the Joneses took full advantage of the area’s sub-tropical climate to create landscaped surroundings abounding in the shapes and colors that such mild and humid weather conditions allow. Named Airlie for Pembroke Jones’s family home village in Scotland, the estate initially centered around the large, multi-gabled, “Sea-Side Park Hotel,” which Sarah Jones purchased with surrounding acreage in 1886.** 

Major site development, however, only began in the early twentieth century, this involving great numbers of azaleas and camellias arriving from Georgia’s Fruitlands Nursery, apparently accompanied by Prosper Berckmans himself. Installation of lakes and curving paths also began at this time, all this work aimed towards creating a naturalistic setting spread over much of the Jones’s 155-acre estate. Local professional guidance first came from florist Carl Frederick William Rehder, who set out an array of bulbs near the Airlie home. (The Rehder floral business had begun in 1872 and successfully operated for many decades. Society members will recall the 2024 Venus flytrap talk by descendant Henry Rehder, Jr.)

Subsequently, in 1906 the Joneses engaged German landscape gardener Rudolph Augustus Topel for large-scale planting plans, purchasing management, and installation help for their gardens. Having first arrived in the U.S. in 1894 and residing for a time in Charlotte, Topel came to Wilmington in 1902, finding employment with the recently formed Wilmington Floral Company. Already in his mid-forties when he began at Airlie, Topel appears to have enjoyed his work with the Jones family, continuing to serve as head gardener until his death in 1937. Herr Topel was clearly a busy fellow, calculating that at one point 150,000 azaleas and 50,000 camellias had been planted on the Jones property.*** 

Sarah Green Jones also gained fame for her roses. As previously noted, many years would pass before Airlie became a public garden, but even in early days she extended an invitation to “any [one] who cared to drive or walk through the place and enjoy the sight of the flowers.” (Wilmington Morning Star, May 1909) A feature attraction, moreover, was “Mrs. Jones’ rose gardens,” said by one observer to be “one of the most beautiful sights that he had ever seen.”

Though Pembroke Jones died in New York in early 1919, the gardens at Airlie continued to thrive, providing a dazzling setting for large-scale social activities. The widowed Sarah Green Jones, in turn, married long-time family friend and railroad magnate Henry Walters in 1922 (d. 1931). Subsequent years would see the newly minted “Mrs. Walters” open Airlie to the public on limited special occasions, as did the Corbett family who bought Airlie in 1948 from Sarah’s daughter, Sadie Jones Pope.

The great transitional moment came in 1999, however, when New Hanover County acquired sixty-seven acres at Airlie and opened the site year-round to the public. Like Society members in 2024, visitors can leisurely enjoy its many distinct features, including the ancient Airlie Oak and the bottle chapel in the Minnie Evans Sculpture Garden. Or, they can simply share a bench with a whimsical frog figure. For many visitors, however, the best part may be Airlie’s Bradley Creek setting, which makes this a superb place to spend hours observing wildlife and bird-watching. 

In addition, as a friend reminded this author quite recently, Airlie Gardens can just simply offer a rejuvenating retreat from the sun, sand, and surf of nearby Wrightsville Beach

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*https://southerngardenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/Magnolia.2023.XXXV_.4.pdf.pdf#page=12 and https://southerngardenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/Magnolia-NL-Spring-24-Final.pdf#page=6

**For a useful overview of Airlie Gardens’ history, see: **https://airliegardens.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/History-Timeline.pdf

*** Griswold and Weller in The Golden Age of American Gardens, 167; the authors were using E. T. Shaffer’s Carolina Gardens as their source.

For further discussion, see: https://www.tclf.org/landscapes/airlie-gardens