Owens Library

SED Gallery

Founders Memorial Garden

SED Technology Services (Computer Labs)

Photo Tour of the SED

Founders House and Memorial Garden

The Founders House
Built in 1857, the historic Greek Revival house with its adjacent kitchen building and smokehouse serve as a pivotal point for the Founders Memorial Garden. Originally built as a faculty residence, the Founders Garden House has served many University functions over the years which include housing the Department of Landscape Architecture during the 1940's and 1950's. The Garden Club of Georgia occupied the house as its state headquarters from 1963 to 1998.

Founders House Floor Plan

The Garden
In 1936, The Garden Club of Georgia began a fund to create a living memorial to the twelve founders of the Ladies' Garden Club of Athens, the first garden club in America, organized in 1891.

Dean Hubert B. Owens, his staff, and students of the Landscape Architecture Department, working with funds contributed by the Garden Club of Georgia members, designed and developed the nationally acclaimed Founders Memorial Garden, completing the project in 1946. This garden not only serves as a museum of landscape design, but as a natural laboratory for botany, forestry, and related disciplines.  Its buildings are historic and the entire property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  

The layout of the two and one-half acre series of gardens, the grounds of the former Headquarters House for the Garden Club of Georgia, consists of a formal boxwood garden, two courtyards, a terrace, a perennial garden, and an arboretum as well as two informal areas, one dedicated as a memorial to Johnnie Kyle Woodruff of Columbus, Georgia.  

After the establishment of the Founders Garden, the garden club acquired the old smokehouse for a living museum to the twelve original garden club ladies. It was restored and furnished in keeping with the period of the house. Historical mementos, pictures, and a painting depicting the historical first meeting of a garden club are among the most treasured items in the museum.

The main house is Greek Revival style and was built in 1857 and restored by The Garden Club. In 1961, the house had served as a residence for University of Georgia professors, a dining hall, quarters for the biological sciences department, a residence for the first Dean of Women, a chapter house for the Phi Mu Sorority, and an office and studios for the School of Landscape Architecture beginning in 1938.

The stone pavers in the front courtyard (facing Lumpkin Street) were rescued by the late Hubert Bond Owens, Dean of the University of Georgia School of Landscape Architecture.  Dean Owens brought the cobblestones to the Headquarters House as they were removed from an Athens street resurfacing project. In 1991, to celebrate their Centenary, The Ladies Garden Club of Athens placed a time capsule under a circular design of pavers in the front courtyard. Founded in 1891, The Ladies Garden Club was the first garden club organized in America. This capsule will be unearthed and opened in the year 2091!  Currently, the property is used for SED offices, meetings, and seminars, with two period museum rooms under development.