Charles Elliott House Garden

Large wooden gates provide an impressive entrance to a motor court in front of the Charles Elliott House built in 1759 and recently restored to its original Georgian grandeur. The owner, having previously worked with Hugh and Mary Palmer Dargan on an earlier garden on South Battery, asked Hugh to design this new space. Hugh and Charleston landscape architect Glen Gardner created the lovely parterre garden beyond the garden gate. The owner, an ardent preservationist, wanted the large iron gates, which previously stood on Legare Street, to be saved; they have been installed on the brick entrance wall.

In this area is a walkway with a liriope bed on one side and tea olives and pittosporum shrubs on the other. Two large urns with seasonal plantings greet you as you enter the parterre garden. The parterre garden has oyster shell walkways with a central oval of impressive large Japanese boxwoods. Encircling this area are six beds edged in boxwood with 'Champney’s Pink Cluster' Noisette roses and seasonal plantings. Providing balance behind this parterre are brick-edged beds with large boxwoods in front of a fountain. On the right is a row of fourflowering cherry trees, underplanted with azaleas, in front of the kitchen house.

The garden contains many other typical Charleston shrubs and trees such as camellias, sasanquas, hollies, gardenias, and a large magnolia in one corner. This is a wonderful garden creation in the spirit of the eighteenth-century house.