Gardens
See a brief overview of our gardens and historic property.
Gardens at a Glance
The gardens at Yew Dell offer a delightful place to spend a day, an excellent place to learn new plants and provide an opportunity to check out design details for your own garden. The gardens range from formal to informal and contain everything from trees to shrubs, annuals and perennials and anything else you can imagine. Because of our variety, you can always count on something blooming at Yew Dell – 12 months of the year.
Yew Dell’s gardens also support our ongoing research aimed at finding the best new plants for regional gardens. Each plant in our gardens is evaluated for performance. When we find a new winner, we work with local industry members to get the plant into production…and eventually into area gardens. We’re always on the lookout for pest-resistance, attractive and well-adapted plants for our gardens and for yours.
Arboretum
This 8+-acre collection of trees and shrubs is a great place to learn new plants, do a little birdwatching, or enjoy some peace and solitude. A few sculptures dotted along the mowed path add a nice surprise along the way.
Beech
Path
Klein-era American beeches (Fagus grandifolia) provide a shady home to a woodland-inspired planting of drought tolerant spring ephemerals and hardy bulbs. With completion of the Castle Gardens, this shady path will provide one of the primary entrances to the new gardens.
Castle
Terrace
This area is undergoing $5.1 million of new garden construction to improve accessibility, add extensive new gardens, a water feature, and open fabulous views across Yew Dell’s pollinator meadow and the woodlands below. Completion is expected early summer 2025.
(This area is currently inaccessible due to the Castle Gardens construction project.)
Cottage
Garden
Constantly changing mixed plantings of annuals, perennials, and shrubs grace the entrance to Yew Dell’s iconic Garden Cottage that is a venue for small meetings, wedding and rental event prep. and other small events.
Learn more about renting this space here.
Cut Flower
Garden
This production and display garden supplies cut flowers for Yew Dell classes, workshops, and events, as well as bouquets for sale in the Garden Gift Shop. A combination of perennials, annuals, and edible plants are used to create beautiful and unique bouquets.
Entrance
Gardens
Greeting visitors the moment they arrive, this garden includes sweeping masses of spring bulbs, annuals, and mixed perennials (Eryngium, Carex, Echinacea, Schyzicarium) combined with winter-blooming witch hazels (Hamamelis species) to provide visitors displays bursting with colors and textures throughout the year.
Evaluation
Gardens
Marked by Corten steel entry kiosks, these two gardens (one for herbaceous perennials and one for shrubs) display a constantly changing pallette of plants involved in Yew Dell’s long term evaluation research to determine best varieties for the region.
Event
Lawn
This luxurious lawn space, flanked by the iconic Holly Allee, bottlebrush buckeyes (Aesculus parviflora var. serotina), spring-blooming bulbs and a stunning, seasonally-rotating border display, is the perfect garden setting for a variety of events or a casual picnic.
Front Lawn
Garden
Consisting primarily of evergreens planted during the Klein’s family’s time at Yew Dell, the combination of hollies (Ilex), spruce (Picea), fir (Abies) and yews (Taxus) provides a contrasting framework for the natural stone of the residence (now administrative offices).
Glasshouse
Garden
These Corten steel planters serve as home to rotating seasonal bulb and annual displays that change every year. The raised beds along the rock house are home to a wide range of cold hardy succulents and species tulips and seasonal displays of tropical succulents.
Glen
Garden
Combining an ephemeral stream bed flowing with Creeping Jenny (Lysmachia nummularia ‘Aurea’), winter-blooming hellebores (Helleborus xhybridus), billowing shade perennials, spring bulbs, summer hydrangeas, and a perfectly situated pair of Adirondak chairs, this is a favorite sitting garden at Yew Dell.
(This area is currently inaccessible due to the Castle Gardens construction project.)
Green
Roof
Providing excellent insulation for this energy efficient greenhouse, plantings consist of drought tolerant, low growing species in a 6-inch layer of crushed gravel. Sedums and Alliums combine with spring minor bulbs and a sprinkling of others to provide a year-round display.
Jean Ohlmann
Secret Garden
Named in honor of our dear, late garden friend, Jean Ohlmann, this shady garden offers a wonderful combination of winter/spring-blooming hellebores (Helleborus species and hybrids), ferns (Dryopteris and Athyrium species), bold hostas and a variety of hardy gingers (Asarum species).
Kitchen
Garden
Yew Dell’s 1840s Log Cabin features a diverse and constantly changing collection edibles. From common and unusual vegetables to herbs and other tropical and perennial edible plants, it is designed to please the eyes as well as the palette.
Millstone
Garden
Formerly a full shade garden (until we lost a 150′ pine in a 2017 tornado) this space shows off some of Theodore Klein’s historic millstone collection amidst a diverse palette of perennials, winter blooming witchhazels (Hamamelis species) and small trees.
Pavilion
Garden
This garden offers a stunning mix of color and texture from spring daffodils (Narcissus species) to summer annuals, fall chrysanthemums and asters, all designed to highlight the year’s events including weddings, concerts, and the year-end favorites, Boo Dell and Yuletide.
Rain
Garden
Providing a place for surface runoff to temporarily collect and percolate into the soil after a rain, this space displays a variety of perennials and shrubs that thrive in quickly-changing soil-moisture conditions. Created with support from Oldham County’s Currys Fork Watershed Management program.
Rock House
Garden
This garden is comprised of three islands showcasing a variety of sun or shade-loving perennial collections and rotating annual displays. Visitors can see a collection of spring bulbs (Allium, Frittilaria, Colchicum, Galanthus) as well as perennials (Helleborus and Heuchera) and flowering shrubs.
Serpentine
Garden
This garden graced the entrance drive to the Klein family home and was designed to highlight evergreen plant form, color and texture. It boasts a sizable collection of unique shade perennials including Hosta, Kirengeshoma, Epimedium, and Arisaema.
Sunken Rock
Garden
Originally designed and built by Theodore Klein as a garden for dwarf conifers, this unique rock garden and offers a wide diversity of plants from around the globe, including a trial of species tulips. Succulents, grasses, and sedum delight visitors year-round.
Walled
Garden
This formal border garden features a small water pool with seasonally changing displays of spring bulbs and summer annuals/tropicals.
(This area is currently inaccessible due to the Castle Gardens construction. When complete it will form one of the primary entrances to the new Castle Gardens)
Garden Sculptures
At Yew Dell we love to use the gardens and Arboretum to show off fine garden sculpture. And throughout the grounds you’ll find a variety of pieces, some that are part of Yew Dell’s permanent collection and others that are for sale. Those for sale rotate in and out of the collection from time to time but we keep an updated list of pieces for sale in our visitor center. Those for sale are labelled with sculpture name, sculptor name, and price. So if you see something that piques your interest, stop by the visitor center and ask. All sculpture sales support both the artists and Yew Dell!
Our current collection of pieces available for purchase include pieces by Lousiville artists Dave Caudill* and Mike McCarthy. We think both artists produce works that feel at home in just about any garden setting. Take one home and see for yourself!
*Check out a gallery of Dave Caudill’s works currently available at Yew Dell.
