botanical garden
A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is ...
built on the grounds of the Rosengarten estate at 786 Church Road in
Wayne, Pennsylvania
Wayne is an unincorporated community centered in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States, on the Main Line, a series of highly affluent Philadelphia suburbs located along the railroad tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad and one of the ...
. Located on Philadelphia's historic Main Line, Chanticleer retains a domestic scale and welcomes visitors for relaxation, walking, and picnics.Jacki Lyden Chanticleer: A Botanical Distraction From Daily Life National Public Radio, June 17, 2012. The grounds became open to the public in 1993. Visitors are welcome to tour the estate seasonally, from April through October. The house and grounds were added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1984.
History
The estate was built in 1912 as a summer cottage for Christine Penrose and Adolph G. Rosengarten Sr., the latter of whom was the head of Rosengarten & Sons'','' a Philadelphia pharmaceutical manufacturer that his family had founded in 1822 to produce
quinine
Quinine is a medication used to treat malaria and babesiosis. This includes the treatment of malaria due to ''Plasmodium falciparum'' that is resistant to chloroquine when artesunate is not available. While sometimes used for nocturnal leg ...
. The company merged with
Merck & Co
Merck & Co., Inc. is an American Multinational corporation, multinational pharmaceutical company headquartered in Rahway, New Jersey. The company does business as Merck Sharp & Dohme or MSD outside the United States and Canada. It is one of the ...
in 1927.
Upon inheriting the estate in 1946, their son, Adolph G. Rosengarten Jr. established a foundation to ensure that Chanticleer would be developed as a public garden.
"Chanticleer" means
rooster
The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated subspecies of the red junglefowl (''Gallus gallus''), originally native to Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated around 8,000 years ago and is now one of the most common and w ...
in French''.'' The entrance gate is crested with a carved-stone rooster; other references to roosters can be found throughout the estate. Rosengarten Jr. hired Christopher Woods, a native of Britain, to develop the garden. After Rosengarten Jr.'s death in 1990, Woods became the founding Executive Director and began a radical revision of the garden. He tore down Mr. Rosengarten's stone house to create what is now known as "
The Ruin
"The Ruin of the Empire", or simply "The Ruin", is an elegy in Old English, written by an unknown author probably in the 8th or 9th century, and published in the 10th century in the '' Exeter Book'', a large collection of poems and riddles. The ...
".
Today, Chanticleer consists of a collection of open lawns and large trees. Different sections of the botanical gardens include:
* Chanticleer House, the Main House, connecting to the entrance and Teacup Garden, which includes an open-air porch, providing a popular spot for visitors to sit and relax
* Asian Woods, planting for which began in 1995, after being cleared the previous year, and now hosting a variety of species native to Korea, Japan, and China, but in the style of an American
woodland garden
A woodland garden is a garden or section of a garden that includes large trees and is laid out so as to appear as more or less natural woodland, though it is often actually an artificial creation. Typically it includes plantings of flowering shrub ...
* Pond Garden, a large man-made circular pond constructed in the early 1970s, acting as a mirror for the trees that surround it
* Teacup Garden, a small garden serving as the entrance courtyard to the property
* Minder Woods, a heavily vegetated area with towering red oaks and dark green pines, firs, false cypresses, and hemlocks, accessible via meandering stone paths
*Tennis Court Garden, the estate's old tennis court, transformed into a garden
* "The Ruin" Garden, the Minder House, built in 1925 and razed in 1999 to offer a series of spaces, pools, and fountains
* Gravel Garden, small garden spaces, connected by a series of steps, and home to a variety of species of plants that are rare to the area and climate
* Cutting Garden, a traditional cottage garden with a series of arches, fashioned from
rebar
Rebar (short for reinforcement bar or reinforcing bar), known when massed as reinforcing steel or steel reinforcement, is a tension device added to concrete to form ''reinforced concrete'' and reinforced masonry structures to strengthen and aid ...
and
driftwood
Driftwood is a wood that has been washed onto a shore or beach of a sea, lake, or river by the action of winds, tides or waves. It is part of beach wrack.
In some waterfront areas, driftwood is a major nuisance. However, the driftwood provides ...
, for clematis and annual vines
* Vegetable garden, where rustic benches help frame a simple traditional American vegetable garden
* Bell's Run, with adjacent woods giving way to undulating lawns, a stream, and a functional 1940s waterwheel
*Bell's Woodland, a naturalistic garden devoted to plants indigenous to the eastern U.S.
*Bulb Meadow, on a hillside, highlighted by Spanish bluebells and fragile daffodils
The grounds
File:Chanticleer Gardens Asian Woods 2000px.jpg, Asian Woods
File:Chanticleer Gardens Rock Garden 2000px.jpg, Ruin and Gravel Garden
File:Chanticleer Gardens Main House Croquet Lawn 3008px.jpg, Plants on the Croquet Lawn in front of the main house
File:Path, Chanticleer Garden, Pennsylvania, USA.jpg, Garden Path
File:Landscape, Chanticleer Garden, Pennsylvania, USA.jpg, Landscape
File:Wall of ruins, Chanticleer Garden, Pennsylvania, USA.jpg, Wall of ruin
File:Ruin, Chanticleer Garden, Pennsylvania, USA.jpg, Portion of ruin
File:Overlook at the Chanticleer house.jpg, Chanticleer House
File:Creek Garden at Chanticleer.jpg, Bell's Run