Wing Haven Gardens and Bird Sanctuary

Wing Haven Gardens and Bird Sanctuary (3 acres) are non-profit gardens and a bird sanctuary located at 248 Ridgewood Avenue, Charlotte, North Carolina. They are open several hours a week, year-round; admission is by donation ($5 recommended for adults).

The garden was begun in 1927 by Elizabeth and Edwin Clarkson around their house. In 1970 they donated it to the Wing Haven Foundation. The Clarksons remained in the home until 1988.

The garden plan resembles a Cross of Lorraine with its long path crossed by two shorter, perpendicular paths, and the house sited between the shorter paths. It contains a number of pools and fountains, and is well-planted with a wide variety of ornamental trees, shrubs, and flowers. The garden also contains an English sundial from 1705, various terra cotta pieces, a plaque with a poem by Japanese pacifist and reformer Toyohiko Kagawa, and a statue of Saint Fiacre, patron saint of gardeners.

In 2000, the National Register of Big Trees recognized the garden's chastetree (Vitex agnus-castus) as the largest within the United States.

Read more about Wing Haven Gardens And Bird Sanctuary:  See Also

Famous quotes containing the words wing, haven, gardens, bird and/or sanctuary:

    “Fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of friendship; and pass the rosy wine.”
    —Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

    “Finishing schools in the fifties were a good place to store girls for a few years before marrying them off, a satisfactory rest stop between college weekends spent husband hunting. It was a haven for those of us adept at styling each other’s hair, playing canasta, and chain smoking Pall Mall extra-long cigarettes.”
    —Barbara Howar (b. 1934)

    “These are the Gardens of the Desert, these
    The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
    And fresh as the young earth, ere man had sinned—”
    —William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)

    “Yet I would bear my shortcomings
    With meet tranquility,
    But for the charge that blessed things
    I’d liefer not have be.
    O, doth a bird deprived of wings
    Go earth-bound wilfully!”
    —Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

    “If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
    —Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)