Last updated: August 4, 2022
Place
Oakland Bottle Garden
NPS Photo/Annabel Jones
Quick Facts
Location:
Natchez, Louisiana
Amenities
2 listed
Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Scenic View/Photo Spot
The Bottle Garden in front of the Main House was originally laid out as a boxwood-lined parterre garden sometime between the late 1810s and the late 1820s. Parterre gardens, with their low plantings and geometric patterns, were designed to be seen from the gallery of the raised house and were common to French landscape design. After a blight killed the boxwood hedges, the Prud'homme family used bottles from the wine cellar below the house to line the planting beds. The family maintained this tradition until the National Park Service acquired the property, replacing broken bottles with new ones or older ones from the wine cellar.
Today, the roughly rectangular Bottle Garden contains beds in geometric shapes: rectangles, diamonds, hearts, waves, circles, clovers, and stars, laid out with sense of symmetry. The bottle edging includes wine bottles from Taylor Wine Company, ale and stout beer bottles, salt-glazed stoneware bottles, Anheuser-Busch beer bottles, mineral water bottles, soda water bottles, and bitters bottles. The oldest bottles date to around 1790, while the newest bottles dates to the late 1990s. The Bottle Garden is one of the more unique features at Oakland.
Today, the roughly rectangular Bottle Garden contains beds in geometric shapes: rectangles, diamonds, hearts, waves, circles, clovers, and stars, laid out with sense of symmetry. The bottle edging includes wine bottles from Taylor Wine Company, ale and stout beer bottles, salt-glazed stoneware bottles, Anheuser-Busch beer bottles, mineral water bottles, soda water bottles, and bitters bottles. The oldest bottles date to around 1790, while the newest bottles dates to the late 1990s. The Bottle Garden is one of the more unique features at Oakland.