Category Archives: Bellingrath Blog

30 Years of Magic Christmas in Lights + New Milestones Reached

Thirty years is a long time, y’all! From 1995 to today in 2025, Bellingrath Gardens & Home (BGH) has been celebrating the Christmas and Holiday season through lights and beauty. From our humble origins in 1995 with several exhibits that are no longer used – although some still exist in our boneyard – to today with color-changing LED light technology and CNC plasma-cut metal sculptures, we have come a long way! The through line over these three decades is one of creativity, artistic expression, technological advancements, hard work, organizational “oomph,” and a celebration of families, couples, and the Holiday spirit. We thank you all for forming multi-generational bonds with Bellingrath Gardens & Home through 30 years of Magic Christmas in Lights.

Some of you may have paused when reading the words “CNC plasma-cut metal sculptures” above. Some of you might even have thought, “Say, what?!”  Well, that may be due to the fact that we’ve never used this technology before in creating any exhibit for Magic Christmas in Lights (MCIL). However, we’ve known since 2022 that we’ve wanted to reach this point in the evolution of our displays. As such we are debuting four new metal lanterns in this year’s show. These lanterns were intricately cut using a CNC plasma cutting machine, a technology that allows us to transform a conceptual sketch drawing on paper into actual-sized set pieces that are, in this case, made of metal. To come see this scene at MCIL, you’ll have to go to the Secret Garden and look for the four metal lanterns. In future years, you’ll be seeing much more of this kind of technological application at MCIL. We are now several years into the implementation of our Magic Christmas in Lights Master Plan, and all I can say is that “you ain’t seen nothing’ yet!”

And on the note of the 2025 Magic Christmas in Lights, I want to thank all of our sponsors for this year: Hargrove (Mobile), CrowderGulf (Mobile), BlueCross BlueShield of Alabama (Birmingham), and Chris Francis Tree Care (Daphne). Sponsorships are vital to our continued success as an organization, and Bellingrath Gardens & Home cannot thank enough these four sponsors of the 2025 Magic Christmas in Lights. If you or your company is interested in being a sponsor for any of our year-round events, please contact Dr. Cory Sparks, BGH’s Director of Development.

Finally, in closing out this column, the last one of the 2025 year, I am thrilled to be able to announce that Bellingrath Gardens & Home has just successfully completed the process of raising $100,000 in funds that are being doubled by The Daniel Foundation of Alabama! This record-setting grant from the Daniel Foundation truly saw Bellingrath Gardens & Home expand our reach with our Development program. Through extensive work by Cory, me, the Board, and several other staff, we were able to talk with many people about how they could help BGH move forward, and to their credit, we have reached this incredible milestone. A proper thank you to these individuals will be forthcoming. With the completion of this match, of which all of the funds are being used to propel the design work for Phase 1 of the Master Plan, Bellingrath is moving forward faster than ever. THANK YOU to all and everyone who has helped us reach this point.

Visit and Connect with Us

Hershey’s Chocolate and Coca-Cola: A Bellingrath Tradition

Since Executive Director Todd Lasseigne’s arrival, Magic Christmas in Lights has grown in leaps and bounds. One of the first additions Todd made remains one of our guests’ most popular: The S’Mores Stations.

A Graham Cracker Sandwich

A contraction of the words “Some Mores” the recipe was first called a “Graham Cracker Sandwich” in early 1920’s cook books and we can thank the Girl Scouts for first dubbing the gooey treat “Some Mores” in 1927. The contraction “S’mores” dates to a publication aimed at summer camps in 1938 and by the 1950’s that name had won out.

Since their introduction to the Bellingrath Christmas tradition, the Gardens have purchased thousands of cases of Hershey Bars. The creator of that world-famous chocolate bar and our founder with his successful promotion of bottled Coca-Cola have some things in common.

Both men made their fortunes. Walter Bellingrath was working as a telegraph key operator at a very modest salary when he got his start with Coca-Cola. Milton Hershey attempted to start a candy business in 1886 but it failed. A friend told him “This isn’t your first failure. Maybe you aren’t cut out for business,” and suggested he return to his family farm in Pennsylvania.

Hershey, like Walter Bellingrath, was no quitter. While attending the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 he came across German candy makers producing chocolate and he purchased their equipment at the end of the fair. Hershey ultimately succeeded by using real milk and introduced the Hershey Bar in 1900. It was an instant hit since it only cost a nickel – the same price Walter Bellingrath began selling his bottled Cokes three years later.

Like Coca-Cola, Hershey’s chocolate became a household word and grew so rapidly that Milton Hershey created a whole town for his factory.

Both men married relatively late for the era. Mr. Hershey was 41 when he married in 1898. Walter Bellingrath was 37. They both adored their wives.

A Love of Flowers

Katherine Sweeney Hershey and Bessie Morse Bellingrath had much in common. Both were philanthropists and both had a love of gardens. Walter Bellingrath supported his wife’s efforts in creating Bellingrath Gardens which opened to the public in 1932.

Milton Hershey created a 3 ½ acre rose garden and conservatory for Katherine Hershey and they opened it to the public in 1937. Within five years,  those gardens grew to 23 acres and included a conservatory filled with palms, ferns, bay trees—and azaleas. The Hershey Gardens was also the first public garden to develop a children’s garden, a feature planned for future expansion in Bellingrath Gardens.

Neither the Hersheys nor the Bellingraths were blessed with children and both men outlived their wives, never remarrying. Hershey Gardens and Bellingrath Gardens survive as memorials to two remarkable women who loved flowers and were certainly loved by their husbands.

Visit and Connect with Us

Plant Royalty

I’m not a patent lawyer, but I can speak about plant patents from experience. If you find yourself awake all night wanting to know more about the plant patenting process, then I have the cure to your insomnia. The plant patent is perhaps the least understood component of ornamental horticulture—the topic seems rarely discussed, despite a large percentage of plant labels at your local plant retailer having a Plant Patent Number (PP #####) printed on it somewhere. So…what is a plant patent, what does it reveal about your plant, and is it relevant for your garden?

Proprietary Propagation

The patenting of specific plant varieties in the US was first made possible in May, 1930, by the Plant Patent Act. The patented plant is considered the intellectual property of the patent holder, granting them exclusive rights to license the propagation and sale of the clone. That basically means it is illegal for a nursery, garden center, backyard plant sale, or even a public garden to asexually propagate a patented plant without an agreement with the patent holder. There are grey areas, but the protection afforded to patented plants is pretty straightforward.

In the 95 years of the Plant Patent Act, over 35,000 ornamental and agricultural cultivars have been awarded a patent. A patent lasts for 20 years from the date of filing, and is not renewable (although rarely, extensions are granted). Once the patent expires, there are no proprietary restrictions on propagating or selling the plant. For example, Rhododendron Encore® Autumn Carnation® ‘Roblec’ PP15,339 expired on March 15th, 2024. This means there is no longer any obligation to the patent holder to root cuttings and sell Azalea ‘Roblec’. Trademarks, like Encore® and Autumn Carnation®, are renewable indefinitely. These protect the trade name and series name, but not propagation. The trademark name is separate from the cultivar name, therefore a trademarked plant can be propagated and sold by its cultivar name as long as it is not also patented…you know what…this is another topic to be explained in another article. Believe me when I say you don’t want me to get started on the plant trademark issue. Since patent numbers are issued consecutively, you can generally assume that every PP# lower than PP 15,339 is also expired, because they were issued prior to the start of ‘Roblec’s patent protection.

***Yes, I referred to an Encore® Azalea as a Rhododendron, since “azalea” is a common name for several species of Rhododendron—every azalea is a Rhododendron, but not every Rhododendron is an azalea.  Sorry…taxonomic stuff…back to the topic at hand…plant patents.

So…what is a patented plant?  Basically, it’s a proprietary plant whose asexual reproductive rights are owned and licensed by the breeder for 20 years.  After the patent expires, that clone can be chopped up, shared, and sold any which-way.

Follow the Money

A little backstory…Azalea ‘Roblec’ was first selected in 1995 as a remarkable seedling resulting from an intentional cross between Rhododendron ‘Schroeder’s Pink Perfection’ x Rhododendron oldhammii ‘Fourth of July’. How does this have anything to do with following the money? Glad you asked.

A royalty is paid as part of an agreement between the patent holder and the licensee. This royalty is charged per plant propagated, typically ranging from $0.10 to $2.00 per plant…for 20 years!  So, if one million ‘Roblec’ were propagated at $0.25ea while under patent protection, the total royalty is $250,000. Wow! So, does that mean that breeding plants is the secret to becoming independently wealthy? If only!  First, $250K spread out over 20 years (before taxes) is $12.5k/year—not enough to anyone a high roller in this country. The patent process itself is very technical, requiring translation from people who speak legaleeze, and costs about $3k/patent. And keep in mind the patent for ‘Roblec’ was granted 9 years after it was first selected as a clone to be patented. That means 9 years of trial agreements and building up stock. That means 9 years of not getting paid, before finally getting paid. Less than 1% of plant patents yield rock star royalties, but hundreds of people in the US make a living from plant breeding. Most of these ornamental plant breeders work for companies specializing in plant breeding, or maintain breeding programs at academic institutions, or are independent breeders that hire a company that patents and promote their work. This means that plant breeders are either being paid a 9-to-5 salary to breed plants, get a cut of the royalties, or a combination of both. In order to churn out next level plants worthy and eligible for a patenting, it takes land, time, and breeding stock—at the bare minimum. With new breeding tools like embryo rescue and genetic modification, a laboratory with all the bells and whistles may also come in handy.  All this takes money. Royalties fund these endeavors. A handful of plant people make a living, while others get a nice check in the mail once or twice a year.

PP34,648

If you look up Plant Patent number 34,648, you’ll find an ornamental grass named Festuca arundinacea ‘Glow Sticks’. That’s my baby! I developed this plant while I lived in Raleigh, NC. It doesn’t tolerate Gulf Coast summers, so beyond my wishful thinking, ‘Glow Sticks’ is unfortunately not a candidate for Bellingrath Gardens’ display. Here’s a bulleted speed run through how this patented cultivar came to be:

  • 2015
    • I discovered a striking white stripe on a leaf of a common turfgrass, tall fescue
    • variegated sport transplanted from the lawn into my garden
    • work began to stabilize the variegation
      • I discarded offsets that went all green or all white
    • 2016
      • Clone stabilized with narrow white stripe barely visible down the center of leaf blade
        • Consistent with each offset
      • 2017
        • Disappointed with minimal impact of stabilized central variegation to overall aesthetic of grass clump
          • From distance, the grass still appeared the typical dark green of the species
          • I intended to discard entire clump once I found something to plant in its place in my garden…but wasn’t in any hurry
        • 2018
          • The grass bloomed in late May, revealing one of the most incredible inflorescences I’ve ever seen on an ornamental grass!
          • Entered trial agreement with Plant Delights Nursery, inc.
          • Named the plant ‘Glow Sticks’
        • 2020
          • Entered licensing agreement with Concept Plants®
            • They assist with patenting process and promotion of patented plants
          • Shipped rooted pieces of the Festuca ‘Glow Sticks’ to Concept Plants® affiliated trial gardens around the country, and to Europe
        • 2021
          • Concept Plants®, based in the Netherlands connects me with Biological Patent Services, LLC based in Minnesota, to begin the patent filing process
            • Took plant measurements, wrote detailed description, and filled out extensive paperwork
            • Plant Patent request filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office June 17, 2021
          • 2022
            • Plant Patent 34,648 granted October 11, 2022

 

Over seven years elapsed between the discovery of what would become ‘Glow Sticks’ and the first royalty check (which I can assure you was quite modest).  But what an adventure! It is important to point out that despite how beautiful and unique this grass was, and how much I wanted to share my cool plant with my gardening friends, and of course brag about it on social media, I had to keep it locked up. If a plant is shared outside of a trial agreement before the plant patent application is filed, it is not eligible to be patented. For me, that was the hardest part! Concept Plants® worked with me to file all the paperwork, determine the royalty per plant, and promote the plant to wholesale growers. They also paid all costs, except shipping, associated with filing for a patent. In return, Concept Plants® keeps half the royalty. Everybody wins!

The Wheel, Reinvented

Are patented plants better than unpatented plants? Sometimes yes and sometimes no! Unfortunately, garden-worthiness is not the only criteria for deciding what plants to patent or even what direction to focus a breeding program. In the past few decades, some breeding efforts began to shift towards appeasing the mass producers and mass retailers with plants that grew to saleable size more quickly, fit into smaller shipping dimensions, or was just a new variety in general, rather than making a better garden plant. Some “heirloom” varieties are still the best garden plants in my opinion, and thousands of great new varieties are introduced each year without a patent number. Some newly patented plants are just hot garbage, while others represent a garden breakthrough that will surely be popular long past its patent. Most plant breeders want to help you make your garden more beautiful than ever, but have to create patented plants that sell well in order to stay in business. With thousands of plants to choose from, how can we ever select which ones are right for our gardens? If only there was a really big garden that publicly displayed as many new and old plants as possible—together in the same soil, so that visitors could make an informed decision as to what will work best in their own garden…hmmmmmm. The best place to determine what plants are best for your amended soil is at a public garden—I can think of one worth visiting right here in south Mobile County! Check out plant royalty on display at Bellingrath Gardens and Home!

 

Visit and Connect with Us

Planning is Everything

Just a couple of weeks ago, Bellingrath Gardens & Home embarked, officially, on a path toward a long, but detailed, vision for the future – our Centennial Master Plan. The vision captured and communicated by this plan sees both the restoration and reinvigoration of beloved, historic spaces, combined with an infusion of new features that will grace BGH as it grows forward toward its 100th anniversary of being open to the public. Despite our long history, being publicly accessible since 1932, this master plan represents, to the best of my knowledge, only the second treatment in viewing and envisioning the boundaries and configurations of BGH’s used property since our founding by Walter and Bessie Bellingrath when they worked with George Bigelow Rogers starting in 1927. As such, we take this process as both serious and sacred.

The quote about planning, used in my title for this column, and often attributed to Dwight Eisenhower, is apropos here for a few reasons. 1) We have laid out a grand vision that we are now embarking upon. 2) This vision is only “initial” in the sense that detailed planning work, per any defined “phase,” must be carried out after the master (holistic) plan was done. 3) Assuredly, some other great ideas will be had in the coming years as we enact this plan. The process of planning, therefore, will continue for years to come, but the Centennial Master Plan will exist as our guide, beacon, and compass.

The first project that speaks to the level of detail and quality of work that we are undertaking via the Centennial Master Plan is actually already underway – the restoration of the Summer House. In fact, this project should be completed by early 2026. Representing an investment of around $150,000 in Bellingrath Gardens & Home’s past, present, and future, the Summer House will continue to serve as a restful, shaded structure, but it will also anchor the future, reopened Camellia Arboretum a few years hence.

Through the Summer House’s success, we have pivoted to “The Historic Core,” which comprises our first major area of BGH that we are studying and looking to restore and reinvigorate. After the public reveal of the Centennial Master Plan on October 14, key BGH staff participated in a two-day design workshop for Phase 1. Initial work that was done during these two days revealed a great excitement for the Historic Core, the portion of the gardens that exists between the Fowl River and Mirror Lake, as well as honest assessments on commonly seen areas that need to be refreshed. Through this workshop, a vision was honed to bring out the best of this critical space while also realizing opportunities for new spaces to be developed. This design phase – Schematic Design, to be precise – will conclude by next summer, after which we will follow-on to “Design Development,” where engineering work and highly detailed designs, including material selection, will occur. By a year from now, we should be underway in creating construction drawings, which will allow us to fully understand implementation costs for all aspects of Phase 1 – The Historic Core – its restoration and reinvigoration.

Now, to some of you readers, this may all seem like a bunch of gibberish. Again, however, I point to Eisenhower’s wisdom via my column title. Reroofing older service buildings, repairing aged water wells and pumps, and replacing worn-out HVAC units all requires planning of some sort, right?! But, the level of detail and involvement for these types of projects pales in comparison to the concept of “restoring and reinvigorating the Historic Core of Bellingrath Gardens & Home.” As such, the hours, days, weeks, and months spent now in the planning process will only lead to orders of magnitude levels of improvements and documentation of our plans and goals to bring Bellingrath Gardens & Home forward. And this, will allow us to conduct the necessary fundraising work that it will take to see these projects to their ultimate and happy conclusion.

We ask you to join us on this exciting journey.

Visit and Connect with Us

Christmas in the Bellingraths’ Day — and Today.

For thirty years visitors have enjoyed seeing the Bellingrath Home dressed for the holidays as they attend Magic Christmas in Lights. It would be wonderful if we had images of what some of the rooms looked like decorated for Christmas when Walter and Bessie Bellingrath were here, but so far, none have surfaced.

Ernest Edgar, Jr., a nephew of Bessie Bellingrath, was in attendance at Christmas dinners in the Home from the first in 1936 until the early 1950’s. His recollection was of a simpler time when the rooms featured red candles in silver holders and red poinsettias.

Greenery used in those days might have consisted of boxwood, cedar, holly, pine, magnolia leaves and Southern Smilax. A cedar Christmas tree would be set up and decorated on Christmas Eve in households where there were small children – not before Halloween which seems to be the current idea.

A photograph unearthed in the History Museum of Mobile features Ernest posed with his son’s Christmas train set on the floor of the Bellingraths’ home on Ann Street in Mobile. In the distance is the Tiffany Pond Lily Lamp and a framed photograph of Walter Bellingrath.

The fireplace mantel shows a very simple strand of Southern Smilax. That evergreen vine with its glistening green elliptical-shaped leaves grows wild around Mobile and was used for decorating every event from weddings to Christmas in years gone by. And this prolific vine gets its name from the Greek word for “clasping.”

Also in use for the Bellingrath table would be a set of china by Royal Worcester in their Regency Ruby pattern. This extensive dinner set has the production date mark of 1940 and while we use the china to decorate the tables in the Home at Christmas, Mrs. Bellingrath actually purchased it do complement her dining room’s color scheme year round.

Decoration of the interior of the Bellingrath Home will begin a bit early this year, but the theme of a Bellingrath family Christmas will be our inspiration once again.

Visit and Connect with Us

Momentum

In football, there are those who feel that momentum is simply an illusion, but there are others who strongly feel that it is real and perceivable. I tend to fall in the latter camp, probably because I tend to get really wrapped up in the games that I follow. Likewise, at Bellingrath Gardens & Home, our forward momentum is both real and palpable. Many of the projects that I have been mentioning over the past couple of years or so are moving along very quickly now, and those of you who have visited BGH in recent weeks can attest to this progress.

1. The Summer House renovation is well underway. As of this writing, the timber frame roof has been erected and tongue-and-groove roof cladding is partially installed. Work is also underway for a plaque that will recognize our major donors to this project. When completed, this restoration will showcase the level of design, detail, and craftsmanship that we will apply to all future work done in enacting the Master Plan. With the refurbished iron lace being the next step in this construction project, that will only leave the copper roof to be installed, something that may have to wait until after the 2025 Magic Christmas in Lights season is finished.

2. The Magnolia Room Phase 1 improvements project is also underway, to the point that work should be completed within another week or so. The two major changes that Phase 1 brings to this conference room are that a) a corridor now exists for Café staff to walk from the Kitchen to the Pantry without having to interrupt guests in the Magnolia Room, and b) a connecting doorway now opens the Magnolia Room up to the Dining Hall, providing us with flexibility for renting each room separately, or together. Phase 2 will see floor and ceiling treatments for the Magnolia Room, but no timetable is yet set for this phase. We extend our sincere gratitude to The Dr. Monte L. Moorer Foundation Charitable Trust, The A.S. Mitchell Foundation, and The Julien E. Marx Foundation Trust for their generous support in making this project possible.

3. The Admissions Building is enjoying exciting changes to its interiors via the completion of Phase 1 upgrades: new flooring (carpet and tile treatments) and an always helpful fresh coat of paint. (We even have haint blue ceilings, now, ya’ll!) The bathroom corridor for this building also has new carpet and will soon have beautiful new wallpaper, which we can’t wait for you to see. As this building is the literal “front door” of BGH, we have long wanted to update the décor, which was showing its age. Thanks to our recent successes in bringing in more visitors to BGH, we are happy to be able to present to you these newly refreshed building interiors that are furnished by the very dollars we collect at Admissions.

4. Over the last few years, we have been systematically replacing old, worn-out roofs on our many buildings scattered around the BGH campus.  The latest project, completed just last month, saw the replacement of a decades’-old asphalt shingle roof on the Horticulture / Development Office building.  In the grand scheme of things, this was not a major project, but it still represents a $13,000+ investment going against a backlog of over $10-15 million in deferred maintenance work needed at BGH.  And, for our Horticulture leadership team and our Director of Development, this is a welcome improvement to the building where they are based.

5. A project that I have probably not yet mentioned is one that will see BGH begin to flex its science muscles, allowing us to communicate with the Fowl River in real time.  What such project could this be?  Is it something of science fiction?  Is this like the Russians training dolphins to detect sea mines? Well, no!  Working with our colleagues at both the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) and Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL), we have purchased equipment that will allow us to measure and share data revealing how the Fowl River is a living and breathing ecosystem.  This specialized equipment will continuously measure the Fowl River’s water temperature, flow, dissolved oxygen content, and salinity, and these data will be logged and communicated for visitors to observe directly.  Imagine being be able to show students in our STEM Education Program and visitors, via a computer monitor station located on the river pavilion, exactly what is happening with the Fowl River after a heavy rainfall, or with a strong southeasterly wind, or during a period of drought?!  We think that the possibilities are endless, and our partners at MBNEP and DISL are just as excited as we are.

Recently, I communicated to the Garden’s Board of Directors that over the past five years BGH has invested over $3.4 million back into the organization, much needed funds that are helping drive our palpable growth and momentum.  These investments are only possible because of your continuing patronage and support, but, truthfully, … the best is yet to come.  For the five projects I described above, I could list five more that are underway or in the planning stages.

As always, stay tuned for continuing excitement and inspiration from “The Charmed Spot of the South,” and make sure to visit often to see these positive changes taking place.

Sincerely,

Todd

Great Bellingrath Pumpkins

Fall.
Sometimes just one perfectly placed word is enough to set our minds ablaze with memories, nostalgia, feelings, expectations, ruminations. It’s as if a portion of our lives—often recurrent—can be crammed into the space of just a syllable or two, lying dormant until the magic word is uttered. Let’s try another one…

Pumpkins.

There’s something so distinctive about the about the way pumpkins look, taste, feel, smell—even the sound they make when thumped. Most of us can identify a pumpkin with four of our five senses tied behind our back! Also, the presence of pumpkins indicates when we are…October and November most likely. Plants, flowers and fruits are synonymous with majority of our holidays and traditional events, but is there any one single plant that joins together consecutive holidays over an entire season like pumpkins?

One Hundred Seventy-Nine.

The Great Bellingrath Harvest is a celebration of fall, along with its traditional holidays and events. And everywhere, there are pumpkins. Once again this year, we unloaded and stacked 30,000 lbs of pumpkins, each placed carefully…one at a time. A huge pumpkin fountain, obelisks, a pumpkin tree, and piles of pumpkins everywhere—Bellingrath’s Display Designer, Barbara Smith designed and orchestrated the installation. The display is very different than last year, with every major display concentration being new and unique. My favorite pumpkin decoration hovers over the square fountain on the plaza near the Bellingrath Home—the color and texture coordination is spot on. But that’s just my opinion…tell us what pile of pumpkins is your favorite! Nineteen people pitched in over the course of 14 consecutive days. How long did it take for us to unload and stack 15 tons of pumpkins? Glad you asked. 179 hours. Again…19 people…what a great team effort!

The Front Porch.

Finally, while we think you’ll be amazed at some of the larger than life pumpkin displays, we hope you’ll find the dozens of smaller groupings tucked away in the many nooks and crannies around the garden to be something that you might repeatable on your own front porch.

We are excited for you to join us for Great Bellingrath Harvest. The calendar can be found on our website here:

The Great Bellingrath Harvest


A Twenty Year Milestone

Mobile Bay Magazine is a popular local publication. This summer I was asked to stop by their Government Street offices for an interview to reflect on my twenty years of my column, Ask McGehee. I was shown into a conference room and it was suddenly filled with the entire staff of the magazine including publisher, T. J. (Jocko) Potts, and Executive Editor, Maggie Lacy.

I was surprised with a framed thank you for my contributions to the magazine with an image of my first column which included a photograph of the Murray Forbes Smith home on Government Street. How appropriate, since the brick from the demolition of that house was used to construct the Bellingrath Home.

In the process I was asked how the column came about. When I was originally approached to be a contributor I had to be honest and say that I really did not like the content of the magazine and had canceled my subscription. I was assured that the publication was going in a totally new direction and they wanted this area’s history to be a big part of the new format.

We patterned Ask McGehee after a popular column in Memphis Magazine which focused on all sorts of local history. So I started my column with a piece about the Vanderbilt connection to Mobile, hence the photo of the house where Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont had been born.

It has been fun researching some familiar topics, such as long gone restaurants, department stores and buildings. Those bring back a lot of fond memories for our readers. But it is the details I uncover which often result in a “Wow, I have lived her my whole life but never knew that before.” That has been a pleasure for me in writing the column over the years.

And just as our tours of the Bellingrath Home include many wonderful stories I have collected from relatives and former employees of Bessie and Walter Bellingrath, my columns are often infused with tales I have collected from Mobilians now sadly long deceased. And the majority of these stories were never sought by previous historians, so I am glad I captured so many over the years.

Twenty years of a monthly column equates to 240 columns. I was asked if I thought I would run out of topics. My answer was “In Mobile? Never.”

Visit and Connect with Us

The Great Bellingrath Harvest, Round 2

Last year, we proudly announced the inaugural year of The Great Bellingrath Harvest, a new multi-week event that would run from the Summer Solstice, through October, and into early November. Because of this new event, and the p.r. that we were able to get from it, October 2024 became our best year, in terms of visitor attendance, in nine years. We had almost 6,000 folks come through our gates, and everyone seemed to really enjoy this new festival. We felt that The Great Bellingrath Harvest had legs and that it could continue on into the future.

This year, we are back for more fun with “Round 2” of The Great Bellingrath Harvest! We’ll start by kicking off the 2025 GBH season on September 19-21 with our Fall Plant Market and our brand new NatureNauts STEM Day, followed closely by our popular Scarecrows in the Garden competition and exhibit. And yes, in case you’re wondering, we will have another 5,000(!!) pumpkins arriving and gracing the gardens, even more beautifully than they did last year! Armed with photographs to prove that we did actually have 5,000 pumpkins last year, we think that our pumpkin display won’t remain a “best kept secret” any longer. Actually, it is my hope that we’ll blow past our 6,000-guest total from last October by setting a new attendance record! And just to let you in on the numbers, here goes. If we have over 7,600 visitors in October, we’ll break that 2016 number. But if we have over 8,100 visitors, we’ll break our October visitor count number all the way back to 2002! As Townie himself would say, “You Can Do It!”

However, we have no intentions of letting GBH’s first act – the NatureNauts STEM Day and the Fall Plant Market – steal the show completely. Following on the heels of those two events will be Jack-o-Lantern Jubilee on October 25 and then our 62nd annual Cascading Chrysanthemum exhibit. As our beautiful new logo for the Great Bellingrath Harvest shows, this fall festival is a celebration of everything from pumpkins to chrysanthemums, with so much more packed in-between. And, as all of us along the Gulf Coast know, fall is such a welcome relief after the brutal heat and humidity of summer. Yes, there’s this little distracting thing called “college football,” but we all know that the real action occurs at Bellingrath Gardens & Home! Come on out and see the magic, and we’ll keep surprising and delighting you with the beauty and elegance you’ve come to expect at Bellingrath, while also showcasing the creative spirits and energies of the talented and dynamic staff team that we have here.

With tremendous thanks for the continuing support you give us, Team Bellingrath is happy to welcome you to this second round of The Great Bellingrath Harvest!

Visit and Connect with Us

A Bellingrath Recovery

On September 12, 1979 Mobile was hit by Hurricane Frederic. That horrendous storm visited Bellingrath Gardens and Home on that memorable night, accompanied by at least two destructive tornadoes. Within 24 hours, just over 2,000 trees were downed and nearly 23,000 shrubs were smashed beneath them. Nine greenhouses were torn to bits and the entire irrigation system was left in a shambles.

Perhaps the most striking memory was that of long time horticulturist Pat Ryan who said that the Bellingrath Home was visible from the front parking lot when he was able to reach the Gardens. And that, he added, was a sight even the Bellingraths themselves had never seen.

Mirror Lake had been filled with debris, its rustic bridge damaged. The riverfront was brutally scared from floodwaters and the corpse of a dog was found in the base pool of the Grotto.

George Downing, chairman of the Bellingrath-Morse Foundation stated “one-third of the photos in our souvenir book are not applicable now.” Indeed, the scarred and missing trees he now saw looked nothing like the lush tree canopy found in the book’s images.

The Home

Local decorator Wade Lott had overseen the redecoration of the Home a year earlier and was proud to have it featured within the pages of the magazine Southern Accents. In December of 1979, a local reporter writing about Bellingrath’s recovery stated: “Replacements for furniture damaged when the tide waters washed into the home’s main floor are on order.”

No tide waters touched the Bellingrath Home, but the wind and rain did. The most damage occurred to the second floor sleeping porch which lost its roof. It was lifted and dropped onto the East Terrace. The force of the storm destroyed much of the furniture formerly in this space.

A storm shutter on one of the east facing windows in the Purple Guest Room fell off and some sort of projectile hit a pane of glass, leaving a very small hole. When the room was entered the next day, the furnishings were all wet and there were shredded leaves everywhere. All that water and leaves had entered through a hole barely large enough for a pencil to fit through.

The original Ludowici tile roof on the home had damage and George Downing stated that “replacement tiles are on order from the manufacturer.” Sadly that was not the case and the house was shingled with a standard asphalt product.

Tulip Time

The Gardens reopened on March 1, 1980 and visitors were amazed to see the memorable sight of 40,000 tulips in bloom in the Rotary Rose Garden. A rain later that day was accompanied by gales of 35 to 40 miles per hour. The temperature that night dropped to 18 degrees with a wind chill of -13 degrees. Every tulip froze and turned black.

Thankfully the Gardens and the Home rebounded. The formerly shaded garden was replanted for sun loving flowers. Since that time trees have been planted and the Gardens now have a balance of sun and shade, nearly 50 years after an unwelcome visitor named Frederic.

Visit and Connect with Us