by Heather Risher

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Ohio Governor’s Residence for a tour of the house and gardens. The house is beautiful, full of Ohio furniture and handicrafts (the furniture, needlepoint, and rotating art exhibits that feature Ohio artists could be featured in their own post), but the gardens are stunning.

From the website: the Heritage Garden was first conceived in 2000 as a way to showcase Ohio’s natural history and environment to the thousands of yearly visitors to the Governor’s Residence. The garden features habitats from the five physiographic regions of Ohio. Former First Lady Hope Taft was the driving force in building the gardens (as well as stitching many of the needlepoint pieces inside the house). In my opinion, she and her team did a wonderful job of creating a welcoming garden representative of the entire state. I wanted to sit on one of the benches or swings and knit or read for several hours.

Our garden tour guide was Guy Denny, who is currently the Board President of the Ohio Natural Areas & Preserves Association (ONAPA) after leading the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves for several years. Guy worked closely with Mrs. Taft on the prairie garden (as he maintains his own prairie in Knox County), but he also shared a wealth of information about the garden in general.

The Governor’s Grove is in front of the house, where each governor since William O’Neill has planted a tree.

There’s a woodland shade garden, and a pergola with water features that provide habitat for turtles.  (If you look closely in the first picture, there’s a turtle head behind the rock in the center.)

When we toured at the end of July, the prairie sunflowers were in bloom. There are several helianthus species in the garden, including the threatened Ashy sunflower (helianthus mollis).

In 2011, the Heritage Garden was designated a monarch waystation.

Towards the rear of the property, there’s a medicinal garden and a Johnny Appleseed tree.

Along the side, there’s a greenhouse and vegetable garden. There is a solar array that provides backup power to the greenhouse and carriage house.

Circling back to the house, there’s a kettle bog with cranberries and pitcher plants.

I strongly encourage readers to schedule a tour and take a Tuesday road trip to Bexley, just east of Columbus, to visit the house and gardens.

If you can’t make the trip, the Columbus Dispatch produced a video tour of the residence, available on youtube: