Bayou Bend

0
4399
Spread the love

Come Join Us

Explore the 14 acre gardens, part of the American Decorative Arts Wing (Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).

The heavily wooded 14 acres along Buffalo Bayou include eight formal gardens. Each is unique in its own way. Three of these are named for a statue of a goddess and muse that presides over their area, Clio, Diana and Euturpe. The other gardens are named White, East, Butterfly and Carla.

The gardens are noted for rare Duchess De Caze Pink Camellias that are no longer available in nurseries, along with varieties of Azalea, Gardenias, Antique Roses and seasonal plantings that keep the gardens blooming all year.

River Oaks Garden Club and Bart Brechter, curator of the gardens, have worked together to transform Bayou Bend Gardens into the state’s only formal organic public garden.

The Gardens of Bayou Bend are the vision of Houston philanthropist, collector and garden enthusiast, Miss Ima Hogg, the only daughter of James Stephen Hogg, Texas’ first native born governor. Miss Hogg studied architecture, landscape architecture and garden design, which she adapted to a domestic scale and to the Houston Gulf Coast climate. Her creation of a total environment encompassing her house and garden is evident as the garden becomes an extension of the house.

Audio tours are available that emphasize the creation of the gardens and Miss Hogg’s evolving taste as they developed from 1929 until her death in 1975.

Bayou Bend Collection…The home of Miss Hogg houses a collection of one of the nation’s premier holdings of American art and antiques displayed in a 28-room setting that traces the evolution of style in American furnishings from the colonial period to the nineteenth century.