Historic Home of Landscape Pioneer Elizabeth Lawrence Saved

In the early to mid-1900s, Elizabeth Lawrence, pioneer garden author and landscape architect, lived and gardened in her Raleigh, N.C. home. But since 1969 a local college fraternity has called the single-family structure home. When the structure no longer provided ideal living conditions, plans called for demolishing the historic home and moving the fraternity into a new building.

Lawrence, the first female student in the North Carolina State program in landscape design, graduated in 1933. She designed several gardens, most for friends, while writing for publications like House & Garden and other magazines, using her own large Raleigh garden as her laboratory.

By 1942, her garden was famous, and by the time she was thirty-eight, she had written her first book, A Southern Garden. After her father's death and her sister's marriage, Lawrence felt the large old house and garden were too much to manage, and in 1948, sold the Raleigh property and moved to Charlotte to live next door to her sister, Ann.

Lawrence is the Jane Austin of garden writing according to Kate Torrey, press director of the University of North Carolina. She was one of the first to teach, talk and write about gardening in a southern climate?EUR??,,????'??+her inspiration coming from the gardens at her Raleigh home. In November a compromise was reached to protect the structure from demolition, with plans to move the house. Pieces of Lawrence's historic garden are already preserved at N.C. State's arboretum.