About 18 miles outside of Philadelphia in the suburb of Wayne lies Chanticleer, an estate and public garden that NPR dubbed ‘A botanical distraction from daily life’. The main house on the property was built in 1913 by wealthy pharmaceutical heirs Adolph and Christine Rosengarten. Chanticleer — named after the ‘Chanticlere’ home in William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel, The Newcomes — was designed as the Rosengarten’s summer retreat away from the city, with architecture by Charles Borie and landscaping by Thomas Sears. Two more houses were eventually added to the property, for the Rosengarten’s children Adolph Jr. and Emily. When Adolph Jr. — a highly-skilled arborist who worked as a spy during WWII — passed away in 1990, he left Chanticleer as a bequest, allowing others to fall in love with the gardens as he did.
Three years later, Chanticleer opened to the public and has since become a destination for historians, green thumbs, flower lovers, and dreamers. Get lost inside the estate’s sprawling 35 acres as very little is off-limits to visitors. There are no roped-off areas and none of nature’s magic gets interrupted by unsightly signs labeling the shrubbery. (Want to identify a flower? Use the LikeThatGarden app to help you out.) Bring a picnic basket and dine al fresco near the Tea Cup Garden or explore the Ruin, an eerie roofless house (complete with fireplace and stone furniture) that’s beautiful in its destruction. The sheer range of gardening styles and floral varieties — from English manor to Asian planting to sub-tropical — might make you feel as though you’ve taken a trip around the world in a single afternoon. Also notable is Chanticleer’s environmental awareness; solar panels help fuel the electricity, rain water is collected and reused for irrigation, and the estate’s outdoor furniture is crafted from wood cut on-site.
Chanticleer encourages visitors to use their magnificent gardens as inspiration for their own homes, so if you’re the designing type, take lots of photos. Also important: wear comfortable shoes. Chanticleer has many steep hills, meadows, twists, and turns, and you’ll want to explore every last inch of the place.