The Airlie Oak

We started the day with an official tour of Airlie Gardens, the history and the myths. I may have blipped this tree before.  It is nearly 500 years old. The gardens were great and so was our guide. I did get a photo of her, but it wasn't a very flattering one so. She was a wealth of knowledge. She had really done her research on the two families that owned it before it was made a public garden.  There was once a private home on the grounds and it was during the nineteenth century that its first owners lived here. They also had homes in Newport, RI, New York City. The original woman of the estate was responsible for the landscaping and design of the gardens and apparently she even did some of the plantings herself (I don't imagine too many).  We learned that she had a summer budget of $300,000 for entertaining at one of the residences that in today's dollars would be the equivalent of about 6 million. We learned lots of new and interesting information, now to retain most of it.