Bryan’s Favorite Place

For Bryan McIntosh, the Spring Garden will always hold a special place in his heart. Since beginning his Biltmore career in Food & Beverage operations 12 years ago, he’s spent a great deal of his working life indoors, from managing the Stable Café to his current responsibilities overseeing all food & beverage services in Antler Hill Village as well as operations for The Biltmore Coffee Co. in downtown Asheville.

But the Spring Garden—a secluded space just beyond the Shrub Garden and shaded with towering pines and hemlocks— stands out to him for two reasons.

“It reminds me of a golf fairway, and it’s also the place where my wife and I were married,” he says.

“We met at Biltmore, so it was fitting that we got married here,” Bryan says. “The Spring Garden is an unusual place for a wedding so that made it different and special for us.”

Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted may have named it the Spring Garden for two small springs found here. As befits its name, this garden is glorious in spring with vivid blooms of forsythia, spirea, and redbuds contrasting with majestic evergreens. But summer brings its own beauty to this location, with leafy shrubs and trees creating a calm retreat.

For Bryan, the Spring Garden also had another plus going for it—it was one of the few places where he had not managed an event on the estate so it didn’t have “work” connections for him.

“My wife and I looked all over the Asheville area trying to find an outdoor location for our wedding. We just kept coming back to Biltmore; you can’t beat it,” he says.

Learn more about our gardens and grounds.