Afton Villa’s gardens consist of a geometric patterned upper terrace, with a sunken garden of terraces, all on the side of the house, set within an English Park. The Gardens are different in some respects from others in the area and down river, but they fit within the English Renaissance style of East Coast gardens.
The gardens in the ruins are divided like rooms on two levels – an upper level, which encompassed the main front entrance of the house, music room, dining room and kitchen on the floor plan, and a lower level reached by a surviving flight of old stone steps that led down into the large, bricked area where once had been the wine cellar, kitchen, and rooms for household maintenance. The remnants of the ballroom entrance, which hung like a balcony overlooking the ruins, also remain, as would steps that had once led from the dining room down to the boxwood parterre outside. On the old, brick pillars that once marked the entrance to the house antique urns were placed which keep flowering perennials.
From the ruins garden, proceed out the back of the lower level, turn left and follow the walkway around, passing the maze on your right, to the parterre steps on your right. Please make a right down the two steps and walk into the first terrace, The Parterre.