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Reimagining the Proposed Lost Garden

Kenan Research Center Finding Aids

The Atlanta History Center provides insight into a small archive of letters and memoranda that reveal the commission's efforts to establish a botanical garden

for Atlanta during the 1940s.

Elizabeth Meriwether's landscape design plan for the Botanical Gardens Park located in Fulton County, Georgia.

Discover more about Fulton County's original botanical garden by visiting the Cherokee Garden Library at the Kenan Research Center, located in the Atlanta History Center. The library's extensive collection includes over 32,000 items such as books, photographs, manuscripts, seed catalogs, and landscape drawings.

Biographical Historical

In the late 1930s, plans to establish a Fulton County Botanical Garden in Atlanta, Georgia, gained support from organizations such as the Atlanta Federation of Women's Clubs, the West End Businessmen's Associaton, and the Georgia Botanical Society. In 1938, Fulton County designated 459 acres near what are now Bakers Ferry Road SW, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive SW, and Fulton Industrial Boulevard SW for recreation, education, and conservation purposes. County Commissioner

Troy Chastain spearheaded the initial development, working alongside Claude Mills, the garden's superintendent; Eugene Schofield, a surveyor and president of the Georgia Botanical Society; and William L. Monroe, a landscape architect from Monroe's Landscape and Nursery Company.

In 1945, a portion of the garden, called the Memorial Forest, was dedicated to honor Atlanta's servicemen and women. The Fulton County Botanical Garden Commission, established in 1946, was tasked with overseeing the garden's progress, with members appointed by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.

Additional funding and labor were provided by the Works Progress Administration. The garden became a destination for school groups, garden clubs, botanists, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts, although it was likely segregated due to Jim Crow laws in place at the time.

The Fulton county plant catalog is proposed to be reimagined at the Promenade as a theme garden.

This collection features a landscape plan for the Fulton County Botanical Gardens Park, also referred to as the Fulton County Botanical Garden. The plan was likely created by William L. Monroe (1892-1965), the landscape architect for the garden. It highlights various features, including an amphitheater, azalea and alpine gardens, cover crop zones, cypress plantings, a bog garden, a schoolhouse, and Mirror Lake. Notable elements include the garden's dimensions and boundaries, which are defined by River Camp Road, Gordon Road, and Bakers Ferry Road.

The Commission was dissolved in 1952, and the garden eventually gave way to Atlanta's growth, including the

construction of the Fulton County Airport-Brown Field and the establishment of the Fulton County Industrial District.