Finding Summer Beauty in the Italian Garden

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If you’re visiting Biltmore soon, make a beeline for the Italian Garden. Located adjacent to Biltmore House, this formal garden is in its prime late summer.

View of the Italian Garden and Biltmore House
Filled with numerous varieties of exotic water lilies, tropical bananas, papyrus, and koi fish, the Italian Garden is a sight to behold.

Magical Lilies

Biltmore gardeners Chuck Cissell and Steven Ayers have been hard at work all year ensuring all the elements are in place for spectacular summer blooms. The Italian Garden gets better every year. This year, it is over the top again and this is probably the best year yet for seeing our water lilies.

All three pools feature different water lilies including hardy and tropical varieties. We’re especially fond of our tropical water lilies that open up in the evening and bloom until mid-morning. If you’re an early morning guest or an overnight guest, sneak down to the Italian Garden to enjoy this unique display.

Water lilies in the pools of Biltmore's Italian Garden
Many guests don’t realize that lily blooms only last for three days. Many refer to the bloom process as being “sort of magical.”

The blooms from the tropical lilies sit above the water and feature bright white, pink, red and even blue blossoms. It’s a marvelous sight to see and just another amazing example of nature’s beauty.

If you miss the tropical night blooms, don’t worry. We have planted different varieties, so guests visiting during the day can still enjoy flowers from day blooming tropical and hardy lilies as well. Look for the blooms through the first cold snap, which can be as early as September or as late as October.

Full view of flowers blooming at the Italian Garden Pools at Biltmore
The Italian Garden closely resembles the original blueprint by Olmsted, with the only main difference being the center bed display.

Blooming Blueprint

While the lilies are the one the highlights of the Italian Garden, the pools include an array of other plants. Lotus, Victoria water platters, canna lilies, papyrus, water snowflakes, and purple leaf rice are all in bloom right now.

Perhaps one of the most rewarding aspects of visiting the Italian Garden is the fact that the design intent has remained unchanged since Vanderbilt’s time. Two of the pools have been refurbished, and the Hemlock hedges have recently been replaced with American Holly hedges to stay true to Olmsted’s vision for the garden. The plants used pay homage to gardening notes and plant orders found in estate archives. We don’t do anything different in the Italian Garden than what they did back in George Vanderbilt’s day.

Bring Home the Beauty of the Italian Garden

Water Gardening is easier than you think. Below are some quick tips for creating a backyard water garden:

  • Select a sturdy, large ceramic container that can hold water.
  • Find a location that receives at least eight hours of sunlight, and use pavers or bricks to form a level base for the container.
  • Start with a fool-proof water plant such as tropical water lilies.
  • Plant the water lily in a small plastic container filled with topsoil and plunge the pot into the larger container filled with water. Cover the soil with pebbles or sand to prevent muddy water.
  • The top of the lily’s pot should be eight inches below the surface of the water. If necessary, add bricks or blocks to form a base within the water container. Finish off the water garden by adding water lettuce or other floating plants.
  • Maintain your water garden by cutting spent blooms on the lily and pushing a fertilizer tablet into the lily’s soil every few weeks.

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The never-ending world of turf maintenance

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Turf maintenance is a large part of Biltmore’s landscape that is often overlooked. You could almost say it gets “walked over” on a regular basis!

When it comes to turf, there’s a lot of it when you consider the lawns around Biltmore House & Gardens, along estate roadsides, and everywhere else.

Well maintained turf surrounding The Inn on Biltmore Estate
The grounds surrounding The Inn on Biltmore Estate include acres of well maintained turf.

Keeping all that grass mowed and trimmed is the responsibility of Biltmore’s Turf Management team.

“We now 135–140 acres each week, and some areas are mowed twice a week,” team member Dwayne Schmidt said. “We mow every month but January, using riding and push mowers, and we do hand edging in the Rose Garden.”

Historic Rose Garden at Biltmore

He compares his team to a NASCAR pit crew since they must work well together at a fast pace. Their day can start as early as 6:30 a.m. so they can mow and get out fast before guests arrive.

Turf management at Biltmore is a science similar to what world-class golf courses use. The team fertilizes, aerates in spring and fall, maintains irrigation systems, overseeds, blows leaves, trims, and removes snow quickly to keep everything immaculate.

A member of Biltmore's turf maintenance team mows grass in the Italian Garden
A member of Biltmore’s turf maintenance team mows grass in the Italian Garden

Dwayne has worked three years with Biltmore, but his team has close to 100 years of experience. He is a certified turf grass professional and was recently appointed as one of 12 members to the Turf Grass Council of North Carolina. Several other crew members are in the process of earning the Turf Grass certification that includes classroom work and a challenging test. The team regularly participates in continuing education, and recently earned a Biltmore Environmental Excellence Award for rerouting their mowing operations to save gas and energy.

The Front Lawn is Dwayne’s favorite place; he knows that more than a million people see it each year and it is the frame for Biltmore House, carefully tended and mowed twice weekly.

Couple drinking wine on the turf in front of Biltmore House
The Front Lawn is mowed twice weekly, making it a perfect spot for a Luminere picnic!

“Biltmore is an awesome place, and I am proud of the work we do here,” said Dwayne. “When you have people from all over the world admiring your work, how can you not be proud?”

The Lovely Azaleas

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Strolling through our 15-acre Azalea Garden in May is a rite of spring, with thousands of bright blossoms lining the stone stairs and masses of vivid flowers cascading throughout the area. In fact, we expect peak azalea color this week.

We have Chauncey Beadle to thank for all of that gorgeous color. Chauncey, a Canadian horticulturalist hired in 1890 by Frederick Law Olmsted for his encyclopedic knowledge of plants, served as estate superintendent from 1909 until his death in 1950.

“Beadle loved all plants, but he had a special fondness for native deciduous azaleas,” said Bill Alexander, Landscape & Forest Historian. “He and two close friends became known as ‘the azalea hunters’ collecting virtually every form and color variation.”

Beadle and his colleagues kept detailed notes about their forays, writing down when and where they collected plants on travels throughout the Southeast. Native azaleas were Beadle’s passion, and he called them the finest American shrubs.

In 1940, he gave his entire collection of azaleas (which he fondly referred to as “his children”) to Biltmore, planting them in the valley below the Conservatory known as the Glen. Edith Vanderbilt changed the garden’s name to the Azalea Garden to honor Beadle and his lifelong work on his 50th anniversary with Biltmore.

Today, gardeners Bob Smart and Charles Harris, members of the estate’s Historic Gardens landscaping crew, are responsible for maintaining Beadle’s legacy and the never-ending upkeep of the Azalea Garden.

“Chauncey Beadle planted several thousand azaleas originally,” said Bob. “We try to keep as many old plants as possible, replacing them when needed with old types and species, but we also bring in new ones to keep the garden thriving.”

Last year, they replanted several hundred azaleas—mostly evergreens—lining the stone stairs at the Azalea Garden’s entrance and added nearly 400 more in the rest of the garden. Charles explains that the eye-catching evergreen varieties have heavier, more prolific blooms and some even re-bloom. They also planted many native deciduous azaleas that display delicate orange, yellow and pink flowers in late spring.

Not all their time is spent planting; they devote hours researching and collecting additional azaleas to keep the garden beautiful. They find plants at trade shows, through the North Carolina Nursery Notes bi-monthly magazine, nurseries, and growers who visit here.

“Sometimes growers we know will visit the garden and suggest a particular addition,” said Charles. “They recognize that it’s an honor to have plants here.”

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