Welcome to Afton Villa Gardens. We are so glad you are here and invite you to enjoy its beauty. Afton Villa’s story is a succession of six families who have owned and loved it over two centuries-all of whom have contributed to it and in turn have left something of themselves-their vision, hopes, sorrows, joys, tragedies. 

 Today, an arcade of live oaks, with a haze of Spanish moss dripping languidly from their limbs and dangling over a riot of azalea blooms, provides a haunting introduction to a romantic garden among the ruins. Rather than a historic re-creation, the garden is a poignant evocation of a grandeur long past. 

The snaking half mile entry drive you’ve just experienced comes alive in early spring with mound after mound of flamboyant red, pink, coral, rose, purple, and lavender azaleas flowering at the base of a double row of more than 250 live oaks. This avenue of blooms, the creation of prior owner Dr. Robert Lewis in the 1940s, ends in the gravelled court where you are standing, and this very spot once marked Afton Villa’s entrance.

Begun in 1849, the terraced garden is a typical example of southern plantation landscape architecture, and a rare Louisiana survivor. The garden features that remain are sufficiently significant for the Afton Villa Gardens to merit listing on National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.

 When Genevieve and Morrell Trimble cast their eyes on 250 acres of rubble and overgrown landscape — the remains of Afton Villa, a Louisiana antebellum mansion with lavish gardens — they decided to pre-empt its inevitable takeover by real estate developers by buying it themselves in 1972.  

Genevieve Trimble describes her visit to Afton in 1972, “One hot August day in 1972, 10 years after it burned, we pushed open those gates and came in and I cannot describe the devastation here.  Vines covered all of these azaleas, the grass of course was grown sky high and the ruins for the old house were literally a snake pit.” 

The Trimbles then embarked on their huge, 50-year project to restore the lost gardens. Thanks to their dedication, their gardening skills, and the quality of the original landscape architecture, Afton Villa again offers visitors to Louisiana a taste of the golden age of Southern living.