CHARLOTTE (Axios): Before modern hobbies consumed us, Charlotte was a garden town. The newspaper’s classifieds popped with advertisements for this garden club or that one.
Why it matters now: We still have a few remnants, pretty in patches, all around.
Axios Charlotte’s Symphony Webber has five gardens for you to explore this spring, from Daniel Stowe to McGill and all sizes in between.
Zoom out: May I bore you with one you won’t find?
If you stand on the Hawthorne Lane bridge now and look west toward the skyline, you’ll see the clovers that make up Independence Boulevard’s interchanges.
Now close your eyes and imagine 5,000 rose bushes below you.
From 1931 to 1969, those twists of asphalt were Sunnyside Rose Garden. Its caretaker was an eccentric named K.W. Selden, who called it “the only worthwhile beauty spot in the city,” I wrote a few years ago in Charlotte magazine.
Then in the 1960s came the highway. There was no Twitter then, no “save the garden” online petition.
Just the Observer, softly mourning the loss in a 1967 editorial: “We’re reaching the point here where concrete can cover just about anything. But it’s doubtful that we’ll ever have enough rose gardens.”
Details: It’s not on our list, but you can still see a few rose bushes at the end of Sunnyside Avenue in Elizabeth, where the road dead-ends into a brick noise-canceling wall.
