Liberty Hall Historic Site
Kentucky, Frankfort

Liberty Hall Historic Site's grounds include an extensive boxwood and perennial garden that backs up to the banks of the Kentucky River. The garden grows behind Liberty Hall (1796) and the Orlando Brown House (1835), both built by one of Kentucky’s first Senators, John Brown. Rather than being a reproduction of the original garden at Liberty Hall, today's version reflects the garden as it evolved through four generations of Brown ownership into fully decorative gardens.

From the beginning, flowers were an important part of the garden. Traveling as a young bride from her home in New York, Senator Brown's wife Margaretta brought with her a Polish rose. In addition, many other varieties of pillar and climbing roses, as well as perennials, decorated the garden. References to the first garden in letters between Senator Brown and Margaretta in 1802 reveal its utilitarian nature (vegetables, herbs, and fruit trees), and Margaretta's desire to protect it with a fence. Her evident pleasure in the success of the garden, particularly in the orchard where she held Sunday School classes, is shown in an 1819 letter to Orlando, her youngest son. When the original four acre plot was divided in half between John and Margaretta's sons Mason and Orlando, the garden began to acquire its present form. A sketch made by Mary Mason Scott, of the fourth and last generation of Senator and Mrs. Brown's descendants to live at Liberty Hall, illustrates a more ornamental garden with expanded varieties of trees, shrubs, and flowers.

The garden is maintained without using chemicals and with extra care as the staff and volunteers endeavor to achieve the highest of garden beauty and excellence. Today, Liberty Hall Historic Site strives to choose and exhibit historic as well as modern plants while honoring the spirit and structural context recorded in the garden plans and documents of the Brown family.

Please visit our site at www.libertyhall.org. The garden and grounds are open for free, and all are welcome.