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Experience Spring’s Magical Beauty With A Visit To World-Class Gibbs Gardens

Experience Spring’s Magical Beauty With A Visit To World-Class Gibbs Gardens

By Gibbs Gardens
Photographs courtesy of Gibbs Gardens

Glorious spring displays of daffodils and tulips are only the beginning—the curtain rising on what’s to come. Gibbs Gardens is open and ready for another spectacular year of magnificent blooms, incredible color and masterful design throughout its 376-acre, world-class gardens.

Wait until you see what April brings!

There’s inspiration everywhere. Thousands of vibrant azaleas in shades of purple, pink, red, and orange, and Knockout roses with red, pink, and coral flowers bursting into bloom throughout the amazing, one-of-a-kind Inspiration Garden.

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A view of the Inspiration Garden—featuring 215 species of conifers—designed to help home gardeners plan their own gardens.

“I designed this garden especially for home gardeners,” said Jim Gibbs, the owner/designer/developer of Gibbs Gardens. “We wanted to introduce new, hardy planting choices that work best for home gardens and show gardeners how mixed groups of plantings work together based on sun, shade, and part-shade light requirements.”

Designed for easy strolls on walkable pathways winding through 15 acres, the Inspiration Garden features unique dwarf and rare plant collections, huge boulders/stone work and vibrant flowering favorites.

“We started with 215 species of low-maintenance dwarf conifers,” said Gibbs. “They are evergreen, creating a four-season garden and providing beautiful blue-gray, green, and chartreuse color, even in winter when everything else is bleak and trees have dropped their leaves.”

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Spring blooms, including more than 2,700 Encore and native azaleas, bring vivid color to the gardens.

Adding vibrant color are Knockout roses and Drift Ground Cover Series dwarf roses, 1,200 Encore azaleas of 33 varieties and 1,500 native azaleas of 125 varieties. Gibbs enhances the striking colors with his fluid planting design, using a curvilinear serpentine—interlocking S pattern—to create a view that carries the eye forward. “It feels like movement,” Gibbs noted.

The Inspiration Garden blooms twice a year, in spring and fall. For more information on what it took to build this unique garden, go to:

https://gibbsgardens.com/garden-photos/inspiration-garden/12073-2/

Wildflower Butterfly Meadow

The Wildflower Butterfly Meadow comes into its spring splendor after a full year of work to expand, redo and replant the 17-acre plot. “There is simply no other wildflower garden like it in the nation,” said Gibbs.

Thousands of annual seeds for bright red poppies along with 3-5 acres of larkspur and other favorites will be coming into bloom. In May and June, fields of zinnias—a butterfly favorite—will be the main attraction for hungry, fly-in visitors, especially Eastern Black Swallowtail and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, and occasionally American Lady, Red Admiral, and Painted Lady butterflies. Garden visitors will enjoy strolling along the new wider walkways gracing the meadow’s sweeping curves.

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Thousands of colored tulips planted in dramatic S curves along the wooded hillsides.

It’s Back: Twilight In The Gardens

Twilight in the Gardens’ magical, musical evenings return in May. Twilight in the Gardens: Favorite music from the 60’s - 80’s, delightful meals from the Arbor Café, the ambiance of Gibbs Gardens—it’s the perfect evening. Plan to enjoy Twilight with that special someone.

A garden favorite since the very first event, Twilight in the Gardens will return to Gibbs Gardens from 6-9 p.m. every Saturday evening in May and June. After a July-through-August break, Twilight in the Gardens will return on September 2 for Saturday evenings in September and the first two Saturday evenings in October (10/7 and 10/14).  The fall concerts will start one hour earlier and run from 5-8 p.m.

Based on input from Gibbs Gardens’ members, the genre of music will feature cover bands that play the rock and roll music they grew up with and listened to on the radio—specifically, favorites from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

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Encore azaleas in the Inspiration Gardens.

A World-Class Garden Experience

Named “One of the World’s Ten Best Places to See Daffodils” by Flower Magazine, “The largest display of daffodils outside Holland,” by Southern Living, one of the “Thirteen Best Botanical Gardens in America,” and a top garden in Georgia by the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Explore Georgia—Gibbs Gardens always has something new in bloom. The five feature gardens and 21 seasonal collections gardens offer unique and continuous delights for garden lovers of all interests. To learn more about Gibbs Gardens go to gibbsgardens.com.


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