Eden Gardens State Park (10/21/2017)

Saturday, October 21, 2017
After breakfast, we drove to Eden Gardens State Park, once part of the Wesley homestead.

Wesley House (1895-1897 for William Henry Wesley, a lumber baron)
started as a Victorian built of native yellow pine;
in 1963 it was renovated in antebellum plantation style

The house was purchased in 1963 by Miss Lois Genevieve Maxon, a newspaper and publishing magnate, as a showplace for her family heirlooms and antiques, especially examples of late 18th century French furniture. She also had the beautiful gardens that surround the home designed and planted. Maxon gave the house and 10.5 acres to the state in 1968, in memory of her parents, Harry Russell Maxon and Lois Adelheide Gustava Margarethe von Puraucker Maxon.

Quercus virginiana/Southern Live Oak to the left of the house is 500 years old

Wesley House as seen from the reflecting pool (KSS)

Rockers on the Wesley House veranda

Tucker Bayou, site of the Wesley sawmills which received timber that was floated down the Choctawhatchee River

Tucker Bayou (KSS)

Throughout the gardens were bronze sculptures of children at play;
this one held some water that was used as a bird bath

The Wedding Tree (600 years old)

Tamiko with another bronze sculpture (KSS)

Another bronze sculpture (KSS)

The "ground cover" along the Nature Trail is Cladina spp./Deer Moss (KSS)

Cladina spp./Deer Moss (KSS)

Sundial Garden (KSS)

Painted fig leaf on the cherub statue
in the Butterfly Garden

Agraulis vanillae/Gulf Fritillary Butterfly

For lunch, we went to Seaside, which we had visited on 3/10/2017.

Seaside Neighborhood School (1996)

Lunch was from the Barefoot BBQ food truck,
"it'll knock your socks off"