Things to do nearElizabethan Gardens

The Elizabethan Gardens were established in the early 1950s by the Garden Club of North Carolina as a living memorial to the English colonists who arrived on Roanoke Island in the 1580s, including the settlers of the ill-fated Lost Colony. Designed with the formal sensibility of a Tudor-era pleasure garden, the grounds draw on Renaissance European traditions while weaving in the native flora and coastal character of the North Carolina sounds.

Visitors moving along the winding brick and gravel paths encounter a rich succession of garden rooms, each with its own distinct planting scheme and atmosphere. The sunken garden, framed by clipped yaupon holly and seasonal plantings, offers a contemplative stillness that contrasts with the open sweep of the Great Lawn overlooking Roanoke Sound. Antique statuary collected from European estates adds an air of quiet antiquity, and the centerpiece figure of Queen Elizabeth I, a sixteenth-century original, lends the garden a genuine historical weight that few botanical spaces can claim.

Throughout the year the plantings shift from camellias and daffodils in late winter through roses, crepe myrtles, and summer perennials, ensuring that no two visits look quite the same. Interpretive markers throughout the grounds connect the ornamental plantings to the story of the 1587 colony, grounding the beauty of the garden in a narrative that has fascinated historians for centuries. The Elizabethan Gardens stand as a rare place where horticultural artistry and American history occupy the same quietly extraordinary ground.