Azaleas, Coca-Cola, and Bellingrath Gardens

In nineteen seventeen, a man named Walter Bellingrath bought sixty acres of riverfront property south of Mobile. He had made his fortune as one of the early Coca-Cola franchise bottlers in the region, and he and his wife Bessie were looking for a retreat. Bessie began planting azaleas and camellias along the riverbank the following year. What started as a private garden became something neither of them quite anticipated.

By nineteen twenty-nine, the Bellingrath property on South Ann Street was so well known for its azalea plantings that a retired Mobile businessman named Sam Lackland, who had recently visited the gardens of Charleston and seen what floral tourism could do for a city's economy, proposed a city-wide Azalea Trail. Residents planted azaleas in front of their homes. The Jaycees painted a pink line down the middle of the road to guide visitors. Dignitaries cut ribbons each spring through nineteen forty-eight. The trail at its height stretched fifteen miles.

In nineteen thirty-two, the Bellingraths opened their riverfront property to the public. On the first open day, nearly five thousand people showed up. The gardens were formally established as a nonprofit institution. The estate, which also includes the Bellingrath home preserved as a house museum, sits on sixty-five acres of formal English, American, Oriental, and Gulf Coast garden rooms.

The azalea is Mobile's signature flower, and the season runs roughly February through March. The gardens twenty-five miles south of downtown remain one of the most visited horticultural sites in the South.