Chanticleer

Yesterday we took the kids to Chanticleer. Chanticleer is a gorgeous botanical garden very close to our house -- but it seems as though not many local people know it's there. Originally, Chanticleer was an estate owned by a wealthy pharmaceutical executive; his son left it to the public to be enjoyed as a garden.



We got there just in time for the last wave of daffodils. Chanticleer has fields and fields of them, along with tulips and other bulbs. For Liz, here are some



Virginia bluebells (I think).

There are lots of adirondack chairs all over, many of them painted whimsically, which makes the garden a great place to sit and think (or knit). The boys found this glider:



There are all sorts of vistas, little bridges running over streams, a paddle wheel, terraced beds like these along a hillside



and a lovely Ruin Garden (it was the site of a house built in the twenties, which was dismantled. Some of the original foundation was left intact but most was taken down and reassembled to create a picturesque -- and non-hazardous -- ruin).



Tom found a stone couch (complete with stone remote control, on the sofa arm at left)


while Little Miss obligingly smiled for the camera.