POLLINATOR GARDENS

The Meadow, Charnley-Norwood House |

509 East Beach Blvd. Ocean Springs

Visitors to the Charnley-Norwood House have an opportunity to experience two types of landscape gardening which play an important part in the property’s history. These are the meadow and the rose garden.

The meadow, the more prominent of the two, is visible from the road and acts as a filter and buffer that would have originally afforded privacy to the occupants. The property was referred to by the Charnley family as “Charmleigh,” a pun on their last name and leigh, an old English term for meadow. It is without a doubt that the meadow, in all seasons, is quite charming.

A time traveling visit to the Mississippi Gulf Coast 1,000 years ago would show a shoreline littered with this type of coastal meadow, an important habitat in the life cycles of the area’s flora and fauna. While a visit to the CharnleyNorwood House 100 years ago would show little change to the meadow in front of the house, it serves as a natural landscape and is a heavily managed one with the intent of creating a picturesque viewshed. The scenic landscape movement began in England during the 18th century with the goal of presenting an idealized view of nature and natural landscapes. It would become quite popular in the United States during the mid-19th century with the bestknown example of this style of landscape design being Central Park in New York City, which was first laid out in the 1850’s.

While views of the meadow are serene, the meadow is an important lived-in landscape as well. Both the Charnley’s and the Norwood’s would spend time walking through the tall grasses and admiring the native wildflowers.