The University of North Carolina Wilmington has created an old fashioned Southern garden within its highly visible front quadrangle. Plants of yesterday fill the space that is bordered by the first three buildings built on the university's campus. Each building's modified Georgian architectural style wonderfully represents the Old South, as well as academia. They provide a beautiful backdrop to our garden.

A fine assortment of plants make up the Heritage Garden. Spireas, azaleas, boxwoods, English ivy, banana shrub, and fragrant osmanthus provide much of the framework for the garden. Over fifty species of old fashioned perennials create a vibrant composition and invoke memories of your grandmother's garden. Included in the garden are daises, foxglove, columbine, verbena, hosta, hollyhocks, lambs ear, blackberry lily, dianthus, and many, many more. Additionally, because herbs played such an important role in early American gardening, they were also included in the garden.

The Heritage Garden at UNCW does more than just enhance the beauty and educational value of the campus landscape. It provides much needed plant diversity. In the early 1960’s twenty young live oak trees (Quercus virginiana) were planted around the formal quadrangle. Through the years the trees have grown rapidly and today they help define the character of the space more than anything else. One of the original twenty live oaks was recently felled by a hurricane.