SGHS annual meetings often draw special attention to a particular person and/or place, as previously noted with the William Paca Garden in Annapolis. This certainly applied to the March 1997 gathering in Tallahassee, the “person” being meeting chair Janet “Weej” Broderson and the “place” was Goodwood Plantation, along with that region of the state termed “the other Florida.”
Weej (a childhood name that stuck) Broderson, had relocated to Tallahassee from Tidewater Virginia in the 1980s following the death of her husband Edwin. Already an active gardener, painter, and lover of the outdoors in general, she became so deeply interested in Goodwood that it became crucial to her master’s thesis on garden preservation. She was also keenly involved in developing a volunteer organization to undertake actual restoration at the site. A regular at SGHS annual meetings, joined by a dedicated group of friends, Weej received the Society’s Certificate of Merit in 2010 for her Goodwood work, joining the illustrious company of Patti McGee and Jane White as first-ever recipients of this honor.
The story of Goodwood, now known as Goodwood Museum & Gardens, begins with Eastern North Carolina native and botanist Hardy Bryan Croom* (d. 1837) and his 1834 purchase of a large Marquis de Lafayette grant tract within this fertile “Red Hills” part of Florida. In a manner repeated elsewhere in the lower South, the enslaved families caravanned hundreds of miles to Leon County, along with the livestock and equipment needed to begin what would be a highly profitable cotton plantation. (Before the Civil War Leon was the 5th largest cotton growing county in both Florida and Georgia.) What followed was a convoluted tale of Hardy Croom’s death at sea, lawsuits regarding rightful ownership, and Goodwood’s 1857 purchase by the well-connected merchant Arvah Hopkins. Various owners held title over coming decades, the pivotal moment coming with the property’s 1911 acquisition by widowed New Jersey native Fanny Tiers. Under her direction Goodwood then followed the pattern of other regional plantations in being reborn from a “landscape of labor to a landscape of leisure,” to quote the Goodwood website.
Fanny Tiers thus had the ca. 1840s home and other pre-Civil War buildings upgraded to meet her needs and twentieth-century tastes, along with ordering the construction of a number of new structures and landscape features, including the site’s signature water tower. It was all purchased in 1925 by Florida senator William Hodges and his wife Margaret Wilson, who continued the Fanny Tiers tradition of lavish entertainments through the 20s and 30s. Indeed, with its heated pool, pergolas, patios, and tennis court, a visitor might easily imagine sparkling evenings with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald present and kicking up their heels. It would be the widowed Margaret’s second husband, Thomas Hood who charted the path leading to Goodwood’s preservation, supported by a newly created Margaret E. Wilson Foundation. (In 1998, Wilson Foundation director and 1997 meeting speaker, Larry Paarlberg joined the SGHS board.)
With its numerous structures spanning many decades, Goodwood primarily offers visitors a cultural landscape immersion, now to include a half-acre “Memorial to the Enslaved.” As noted in Magnolia for spring 1997, Goodwood’s restoration goal was to retain “the atmosphere of a rural, country estate of the 1920s rather than that of a formal garden.” Yet, over the easily walkable twenty-acres one can also take pleasure in a wide floral variety spanning the seasons. In common with other Deep South landscapes the canopy of live oaks and Spanish moss gives Goodwood an edge hard to match outside that region. Scattered below are the camellias, azaleas, antique roses, and bulbs which though predictable for such locations are nonetheless much to be enjoyed…and often shared at regular plant sales.
While SGHS members took in all this, the 1997 Tallahassee committee also offered visits to other notable area landscapes. This included Millpond Plantation near Thomasville, Georgia, a site offering a particularly significant demonstration of the talents of landscape architect Warren Manning and a possible subject of a future Gardens page post.**
For further details, visit: https://www.goodwoodmuseum.org/history/
*For more on Hardy Bryan Croom, see: https://ncbg.unc.edu/2024/06/27/hardy-bryan-croom/
**Recommended reading on Millpond Plantation: Staci L. Catron and Mary Ann Eaddy (photography by James R. Lockhart), Seeking Eden: A Collection of Georgia’s Historic Gardens, 208-221.
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