Gardens previously discussed have reflected taste, social status, and oftentimes wealth. Completed in 1770, the original Tryon Palace bundled these factors with symbolizing the colonial power of the British Crown. For that reason, the costly mansion and seat of government drew not only local awe and admiration, but also added fuel to widespread backcountry unrest over taxes and corruption, unrest culminating in the 1771 Battle of Alamance.
Set in the port town of New Bern on the Trent and Neuse Rivers, the Palace housed Royal governors Tryon and then Martin, but only until spring 1775, when revolution led a newly formed state government to assume ownership. Though the main house and one flanker burned just a few decades later (the stable wing survived until modern times), diligent research provided strong documentation for a twentieth-century reconstruction, that being overseen by a Tryon Palace Commission formed in 1945. Accuracy was assured by using British architect John Hawks’ original plans and elevations, supplemented by period drawings of the five-part Palladian structure.
To understand the overall setting, the Commission had two 1769 New Bern plans drawn by Strasbourg-born cartographer Claude Joseph Sauthier, each one showing slightly varying parterre garden layouts north of the Palace. As they were produced before construction was finished, however, questions arose as to what degree these garden plans were realized. In 1955, the Commission asked noted landscape architect Morley Williams for designs “comparable” to similar English estates. Sauthier’s formal concepts were then largely put aside, while Williams, joined by his wife Nathalia Uhlman, went on to create an “almost totally invented” landscape, to borrow an expression applied to his work at Stratford Hall.*
The early documents story, however, did not end with Sauthier’s 1769 work. In 1991, Tryon Palace acquired a garden plan given in 1783 by architect John Hawks to a Venezuelan visitor to New Bern, Francisco de Miranda. Surprisingly, this plan depicted four large parterres grouped around a central sundial on the south, Trent River, side of the Palace. It also showed smaller geometrically ordered spaces clustered by the house, these likely being used to grow kitchen stuffs and ornamentals. Intriguingly, not only is there evidence of Hawk’s hand in this document but possibly that of Claude Sauthier as well.**
The Tryon Palace staff, including a new curator of gardens, wrestled mightily with directions the Miranda plan might dictate. (This post’s author was honored to be on a consulting panel.) Yet, documentary contradictions, along with insufficient archaeological data, meant that while the plan would surely complement garden interpretation, for the present there would be no major landscape changes. Indeed, in looking at both the Sauthier and Miranda plans (available in Perry Mathewes’ Magnolia article cited below), one wonders to what degree these elaborate gardening schemes could have been achieved, given the mere five-year period of Royal governor residence and the subsequent control by a state government compelled to auction off the governors’ furnishings and unlikely to be interested in expensive formal landscape settings.
Thanks to the small spaces Williams termed “privy gardens,” today’s visitor sees hints of Miranda plan elements in the formal “Green” and “Kellenberger” gardens flanking the house. There is Miranda homage, too, in the east wing’s kitchen plot. To the southwest, moreover, the elaborate parterres of the walled Latham Garden echo faintly the eighteenth-century design ethos of the Sauthier and Miranda plans.
However, to quote from the Tryon Palace website: “This (Latham) garden especially highlights the “Colonial Revival” concept used in Morley Williams’ designs with emphasis on show and color, not historical accuracy of plant materials.” A major Eastern North Carolina public garden more than exclusively a historic site, the Tryon Palace grounds offer visitors a horticultural experience replete with large swaths of seasonal hues provided by daffodils, tulips, annuals, chrysanthemums, supplemented by other bulbs, perennials, and various flowering shrubs.
Society members took all this in during the May 2001 annual meeting, a program organized by former Tryon Palace horticulturist, Carleton Wood and then curator of gardens, Perry Mathewes, both of whom went on to be SGHS presidents. A meeting highlight was a day-long excursion to the northeastern North Carolina garden-rich town of Edenton, the subject of another Sauthier map and a topic for a future Gardens page post.***
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*Williams had previously overseen archaeological work at the site, see: https://www.rla.unc.edu/archives/ncas/Newsletters_(new_series)/Volume_10_No_2.pdf
**For Perry Mathewes’ account of the Miranda story, see:
https://southerngardenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Magnolia_Spring_1998-1.pdf#page=1
***https://southerngardenhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Magnolia_Summer_2001.pdf#page=14
For more on the Tryon Palace gardens, visit: https://www.tryonpalace.org/. Garden name honorees Maude Latham and her daughter May Latham Kellenberger played major roles in the rebuilding and funding of Tryon Palace and gardens.
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