Stop and Smell the Tea Olive

The most visited garden in America.

Enchanting gardens bloom brilliantly along hallowed cobblestone streets in Charleston as history echoes through its elegant verandas and well-preserved 18th-century mansions. Roots run deep on a peninsula flanked by the great Ashley and Cooper Rivers.

Tea Olive

Long before the first shovel dug into its sandy soil, an extraordinary array of indigenous plants thrived, nurtured by its subtropical environment. By the time wealthy colonists began creating grand European-style gardens in the 1700s, several of the world’s finest naturalists moored in the port city, establishing vast gardens where they introduced plants from around the world.