Kohne-Leslie House Garden

Eliza Neufville Kohne built this three-and-a-half-story Greek Revival house in 1846. Loutrel Briggs, a noted Charleston landscape architect, created the plans in 1970 for the garden, which were later executed. The current owners have respected the Briggs design, while at the same time, the wife (and gardener) in the family has created with her artistic eye an inviting horticultural delight.

Upon entering, an iron fence, covered with yellow Lady Banks roses and underplanted with plumbago, greets you with sasanquas on the opposite side of the brick path. The Briggs design included two garden rooms—the first, a grass carpet surrounded by lush and varied plantings, anise trees, a pomegranate tree, a flowering dogwood, native azaleas, hydrangeas, farfugiums, mahonias, and a towering live oak overhead. When viewing the piazzas, confederate jasmine surrounds the first-floor arches behind a two-tiered cast-iron fountain. The ground floor piazza is an inviting spot to sit and dine with many vistas of the garden. Separating the first and second rooms are four Kingsville boxwood parterres.

A courtyard garden, the second room, with a matching two-tiered fountain, is also enveloped by overflowing borders, including native azaleas, Japanese maples, and variegated gingers. Throughout the courtyard, which serves for dining and entertaining, are vintage seating and Italian terra cotta pots and planters, in different sizes and shapes, all filled with colorful perennials and seasonal plantings. The brick entrance driveway itself is a wandering walkway, lined with more terracotta pots bursting with colorful plantings. A long bed is filled with holly ferns, autumn ferns, camellias, sasanquas, and farfugiums, with two sizeable old tea olives and a Savannah holly overhead. This verdant garden teems with a variety of flora, all awaiting your discovery. 

Open Days 2021: Saturday, June 5
Hours: 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Admission: This Open Day requires preregistration through our partners at SpoletoUSA. Visit spoletousa.org/events/behind-the-garden-gate/ for more information.