Chanticleer Garden, Wayne

Along Philadelphia's storied Main Line, a forty-eight-acre property called Chanticleer has one of the most distinctive origin stories in American horticulture. Adolph Rosengarten Senior, whose pharmaceutical company would eventually merge with Merck, completed his country house here in nineteen twelve as a summer retreat from the city heat. The estate passed down through the Rosengarten family, and when Adolph Junior died in nineteen ninety, he left the entire property to the public.

The garden opened to visitors in nineteen ninety-three. Today horticulturists treat Chanticleer as a creative laboratory rather than a formal showpiece, planting boldly and changing combinations season by season. What began as a pharmaceutical heir's escape from Philadelphia has become one of the most admired pleasure gardens in North America.