Some of Atlanta's most charming public gardens are off the beaten path.
If not precisely secret, they do lie in unexpected places.
Here are five such spots waiting to recharge the weary.
Behold, beauty.
Part of Freedom Park, the Carter Center Gardens in Atlanta are open every day from 6 a.m.-9 p.m.
The Japanese Garden at the Carter Center Gardens
This oasis is open each and every day from 6 a.m.-9 p.m. Designed by Japanese Master Gardener Kinsaku Nakane, it features azaleas, rhododendrons, Japanese maples, river birch, golden raintree, camellia and barberry. Its large waterfall represents former President Jimmy Carter and the small waterfall Rosalynn Carter. A good vantage for viewing the Japanese Garden is the center's Native Oak Forest, a three-acre natural area on the property left undisturbed. Nearby landscapes include a rose garden -- with a coral Rosalynn Carter rose -- and entry gardens with star magnolias.
The Carter Center, One Copenhill, 453 Freedom Parkway, Atlanta
404-420-5100 or 800-550-3560 carter-center-gardens.com
Georgia Perimeter College Ferns of the World Garden
Nestled just behind the Decatur campus on four acres, this exhibit is restful and educational at the same time. It is rife with ferns native to Georgia and from temperate climates around the world, accented with bluebells, lady slippers and the like. It's open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to dusk. Show up on Wednesdays between 10 a.m.-1 p.m. if you like. That's when volunteers gather to work and talk about propagation and years of rescue missions to save native plants indigenous to this area.
Also known as the Wildflower Center of Georgia, the GPC botanical garden has the largest collection of native plants in Georgia.
3251 Panthersville Road, Decatur
678-891-2668 gpcnativegarden.org
The "I Have a Dream" World Peace Rose Garden on Atlanta's Auburn Avenue features 185 roses.
"I Have a Dream" World Peace Rose Garden
Planted at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in 1992, this garden has 185 roses. Its soothing design is meant to represent King's life and ideals of peace through nonviolence. If you stand at the bordering Peace Plaza, you can just see the graves of King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, directly across the street. No fee, open sunrise to sunset.
450 Auburn Ave. NE, Atlanta
404-331-5190 x5046 worldpeacerosegardens.org
Kennesaw Mountain Daylily Gardens are open most days for visits, but call first.
Kennesaw Mountain Daylily Gardens
Here's a half-acre of beauty convenient for the Marietta folks. Bill and Diana Waldrop's love song to daylilies includes an outside garden that begins blooming in late May and sometimes lasts well into September. It is lovely for walks or close-up examination of the unusual varieties grown at the gardens. Some of them were developed and "introduced" to the daylily public by the Waldrops. The couple sells daylilies online and at two annual plant sales, but they also welcome visitors who call ahead of time to make arrangements.
310 McDaniel Road, Marietta
dianarae@aol.com
770-429-0204 home, 404-375-9454 cell kennesawmountaindaylilygardens.com
Dunaway Gardens is now on the National Register of Historic Places but was once completely grown over.
Historic Dunaway Gardens
Dunaway Gardens is not a well guarded secret. It's on the National Register of Historic Places and charges admission ($10 for adults; $8 for children.)
But the gardens have a romantic past -- and for nearly half a century lay forgotten beneath rubble and kudzu. In 1934, Hetty Jane Dunaway, a famous stage actress, established the gardens on her husband Wayne P. Sewell's dramatic ancestral plantation. Her celebrity friends flocked there and Dunaway hosted ballet troupes and indoor and outdoor theater. When her star faded, the gardens descended into kudzu-covered decay for decades.
As of 2005, they gardens are back with all their rock and floral beauty. They are well worth the 30-mile drive past South Fulton to reach them. Highlights include a hidden Great Pool, the original amphitheater and the hanging gardens. Most alluring of all, though, is the way the garden's history fires the imagination.
3218 Roscoe Road/Highway 70, Newnan
678-423-4050 dunawaygardens.com
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