Spring at Biltmore Estate, Part I – guest post by TheWoobDog

 

My husband and I (and our dog, of course) recently spent a weekend in Asheville, NC, to enjoy a mini-vacation celebrating both the fact that tax season was over (you’d think this would only affect me, since my husband’s job has nothing to do with accounting, but since he has to live with me during tax season he’s just as glad to see the rear end of it as I am) and the fact that in some parts of the state spring has actually started to manifest with no take-backs.

Here in the mountains, spring is a tease* – we’ll have balmy temps for a week (maybe two), and all the plants feel the soil warming and suddenly pop out of the earth.** Spring, fickle mistress that she is, then invariably heads south for a few more weeks, at which point the temps drop back to 18° F (roughly -8° C), everything green is instantly blighted and we all fall into a deep depression. It’s at this point that all of us in the mountains head in droves to lower elevations to remind ourselves that there is hope.

So following this tradition, we headed to Asheville, where we endured miserable cold and rain for the first two days of our vacation, desperately checking the weather forecast every hour or so to make sure the promised sunshine and warmth were still on for the weekend and hoping the single pair of long pants and jacket each of us brought “just in case” would last until the weather broke.*** Sunday the long-awaited sunshine finally arrived and we drove over to Biltmore Estate to have a picnic among the glorious spring blooms.

 

Biltmore house exterior, showing the grand staircase

For those unacquainted with it, Biltmore Estate is the largest privately owned residence in the United States, a 250-room chateau built by George Vanderbilt in the 1890’s in the French Renaissance style. The grounds and gardens – originally totaling 125,000 acres but reduced now to approximately 8,000 – were designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York City’s famed Central Park. Olmsted turned the over-farmed, over-logged, nutrient-depleted expanse of misused land purchased by Vanderbilt into a marvel of landscape architecture considered to be his most successful project.

A portion of the Biltmore landscape

 

Still today, a team of over five dozen full-time arborists, gardeners, foresters, and assorted horticulturalists work to further and maintain the vision he had for the property, which included extensive conservation work to reforest the property and turn the estate into a sustainable, functional, and self-sufficient model of beauty and utility.

 

A field planted with canola – the pressed plants will feed estate livestock, the seeds will make cooking oil for estate kitchens, and the used cooking oil will be recycled into biodiesel for estate equipment

 

It’s pretty incredible to read about the history of the house and grounds, as well as the strides still being made on the estate in the area of conservation and sustainability, but that’s not really what was on our minds as we settled in for our picnic. It was 70° (about 21° C), we were sitting in the (slightly damp) grass in the shade of a huge tree, and this was our view as we drank wine from the estate’s winery and nibbled on grapes and cheeses:

 

Picnic view

 

Technically we were in the Azalea Garden, a 20-acre# area containing one of the largest collections of native azaleas in the world, but none of the azaleas save one were blooming while we were there. I managed to sneak up on the one and snap a pic, but I couldn’t tell if it was just over-eager and burst happily into bloom a week too early or if it was a late-comer to the party and blossomed after the others had turned in. It’s possible a late frost caught a lot of the azaleas – some looked as though they were past their peak while others looked as though they were just forming buds, so it was hard to tell, but our timing was obviously off in one direction or the other.

 

Lone azalea

 

We didn’t really want to hike down through any more of the Azalea Garden after eating, so we walked up toward the house to check out some of the other gardens that were bursting with spring color. On the way, we passed this random Staircase to Nowhere charmingly tucked into a shaded hillside and I had to take a pic (one of my most fervent desires for our home landscaping## is to someday be able to incorporate stonework).

 

Stone stairs

 

The Italian Garden, the most formal garden on the estate, isn’t too exciting this early in the year as none of the water plants are out, so we strolled through the Shrub Garden. This area, also known as the Ramble since its meandering paths take visitors through four acres of native and exotic plants, connects the formal Italian Garden with the English-style Walled Garden and was designed to showcase a succession of color throughout the year. I have a particular fondness for spring-flowering trees and the Shrub Garden delivered these in spades – we saw absolute riots of blooms high and low, much to the delight of my winter-shriveled heart.

 

Hybrid Magnolia

White Dogwood (our state tree)

Pink Dogwood

Littleleaf Lilac

Burkwood Viburnum

Common Flowering Quince

Bleeding Heart – this little guy was tucked in the shade next to the path and I almost didn’t see him

 

We also saw this, which wins the prize for best visual of the trip (they were delighted to pose for a picture, but I’ve cropped out the man’s face since I’m sure he didn’t anticipate being plastered on the internet for international readers to enjoy):

 

This cat was wearing a harness and leash and riding on this man’s shoulder – note the flower tucked jauntily behind his neck.

* * *

* This will be important later, when it comes time to understand certain oddities of my gardening habits.

** It’s literally possible to watch things grow – we’re talking an inch-and-a-half of new growth in a day.

*** The original forecast had been for warm temperatures and sunshine the whole time we were in Asheville, then the lovely weatherpersons suddenly announced the unexpected arrival of a cold front as we were driving down.^

^ In other words, right when it actually hit. Was this really not something anyone could see coming in advance? Really?

# Some sources say 15-acre, but our official Biltmore Guide says 20-acre so that’s what I’m going with.

## Perhaps an overly lofty word for the state of affairs currently surrounding our house.