Oak Hill & The Martha Berry Museum - Oak Hill Gardens

Oak Hill Gardens

The gardens on the right side of the Oak Hill are Formal Garden, Goldfish Garden, Sundial Garden, and Sunken Garden. The gardens were designed by a Philadelphia landscape artist, Robert Cridland, to formalize surrounding Oak Hill during 1927 renovation. Cridland's landscaping designs represented early twentieth century landscaping trends that accompanied the revival of Colonial architecture. Formal Garden, formerly Frances Rhea Berry's garden, is the boxwood parterre in stones and curbings with spraying fountains on the pool. It is unclear if this garden was here before Martha Berry's renovation but some of the curbing and layout could have existed previously. The formal garden showcase is used for annual plantings, changing seasonally with summer annuals in the spring, Crepe Myrtles and Rose of Sharon (athea) in the summer, chrysanthemums in the fall, violas, kale, and ornamental cabbage in the winter. The formal garden's opposite side is the Goldfish Garden. The Goldfish Garden was Martha's favorite spot where she wrote the letters under the arbor on the north end and Aunt Martha used to come and feed her goldfish in the pond surrounded by beds until her death in 1951. It was constructed at the same time as the Formal Garden. Now it is used as a showcase for herbs with knot garden around the pond using dwarf barberries and dwarf boxwood. Beside the goldfish garden is the

Sundial Garden that has the actual sundial in the center of it. It was believed to be used for tea and floribunda type roses. The Sundial Garden is similar changes to the gardens as summer sunflowers, fall mums, and winter cabbage and kale. The last garden is the Sunken Garden in end of the line of gardens. The Sunken Garden was constructed in 1934 and completed in 1936 as an amphitheatre area for small concerts and entertaining but now it is a garden. Kwansan cherry trees (were gifted from the Emperor of Japan in the 1930s) and collection of day lilies (were given from the Georgia Day Lily Society in the 1980s) are in the garden with the changes of the seasons, annuals, and ornamental grasses (summer), mums (fall), and pansies, violas, cabbage, and kale (winter) in the beds.