Colorful Carolina: Dogwoods and Tulips in the Blue Ridge Mountains
We visited Asheville’s Biltmore Estate gardens in early spring.
Asheville is famous for its mountain music and dancing. And for its beautiful setting in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Asheville is also the birthplace of the American novelist, Thomas Wolfe. Tom wrote an autobiographical novel called Look Homeward, Angel. It’s about growing up in a town that looks a lot like Asheville. Several years later he wrote You Can’t Go Home Again. Well, duh! Not after you pissed off those friends and relatives you wrote about in your first novel!
Asheville is also the home of the largest privately-owned house in the country.
George Vanderbilt was the youngest grandson of Cornelius the shipping and rail magnate. His older brothers ran their grandfather’s enterprises while George collected art and built his Asheville summer home in the 1880s. It has 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces.
And some magnificent gardens.
One day in the early spring of 2007 we visited the Biltmore Estate and gardens. It was a colorful day. The dogwoods and redbuds were in bloom. And so were the red, white. blue, orange, pink and purple tulips. Daffodils, too. But they were just yellow and white.
They plant 75,000 tulips every year for the springtime gardens. The tulips are replaced by annuals in the summer and by mums in the Fall.
After our garden visit, we drove up and down the Blue Ridge Parkway to see some of the views we heard about. We were not disappointed.
Oh, that’s why they are called the Blue Ridge Mountains!
We saw signs for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on our drive. But we didn’t enter. We also saw signs for Tennessee up ahead. But we did not cross the border, either.
We drove back to Charlotte the next day and attended a family wedding in Belmont a day later. The wedding took place at the Stowe Botanical Gardens. We got to see more flowers!
The next day we flew back home to California. That was our first and probably our last visit to North Carolina. We have traveled all over the western US but seldom venture east of the Mississippi.
But we’re glad we accepted our wedding invitation and decided to arrive a few days early, which allowed us to visit Asheville and the Blue Ridge Mountains!
Oh, we keep track of all the countries and states and provinces we have visited. The road we traveled from Charlotte to the wedding in Belmont straddles the border with South Carolina for a few miles. So, we can say that we visited South Carolina on this trip, too!
Thanks for reading!
