Landscape Information
In 1839 David Barrow purchased the 250-acre Home Place estate from his father Bartholomew. When Barrow married Susan Woolfolk in 1847 the couple renamed and renovated the property, expanding the existing residence into a Gothic Revival-style mansion and adding over 25 acres of gardens. The Barrow’s landscape includes a half-mile long curving drive lined with live oaks that mark the entry to the estate. The gardens, adjacent to a small family cemetery, include a formal parterre garden and boxwood maze. Below the parterre a series of seven formal terraces cascade down a hillside.
Woolfolk sold the estate in 1876, two years after Barrow died. The property fell into disrepair until it was purchased by Dr. Robert Lewis in 1915. Lewis and his wife restored the gardens and planted hundreds of azaleas on the property, including along the entrance drive. In 1945 Mrs. Dorothy Mills Noble (later Percy) purchased the estate and hired landscape architects Theodore and Lou Bird Landry to redesign the entrance and gardens. After a fire destroyed the main house in 1963, the estate was abandoned and entered a second period of decline. Concerned that the land would be purchased by developers, Genevieve and Morrell “Bud” Trimble acquired the property in 1972. Working with landscape architect Dr. Neil Odenwald and landscape gardener Ivy Jones, the Trimbles gradually rehabilitated the gardens and opened them to the public. They also converted the ruins of the mansion into a garden, added a pond and a lake, and created a small garden called the Music Room at the bottom of the slope beyond the terraces. Morrell Trimble passed away in 2004 and Genevieve Trimble in 2023. Afton Villa was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
