Clary Gardens :: History :: Background

Our mission is to engage the community to develop and maintain evolving botanical gardens, providing access to environmental stewardship, horticultural education, local history, and the arts.
	Clary Gardens is a new botanical garden being developed in Eastern Ohio, amid the Appalachian foothills. While the garden is still in its infancy, we are open to the public and encourage you to visit often as the garden evolves. The Garden encompasses 20 acres of rolling hills, woodlands, sandstone outcroppings, spring-fed ponds and plenty of open landscape for the development of gardens. We have rehabilitated two original 19th-century brick houses on the property over the years and one of these historic houses is open to the public when staff is on-site. These brick houses were built by John and Richard Compton—two brothers from Culpepper, Virginia who made Coshocton, Ohio their home in the early 1800’s. They purchased the land from John Calder, the founder of Caldersburgh – which is present-day Roscoe Village. The Compton family used the land for farming and raised a small orchard on the property.
The Clary name became associated with this property through the efforts of Elizabeth Brandel Clary. Mrs. Clary wanted to create a botanical garden to honor her late husband, Lawrence Clary, whose family owned and operated a florist business in Coshocton for over a hundred years. In 2001, Mrs. Clary established the Clary Garden Foundation and purchased this tract of land for its natural beauty, fertile soil, and abundance of springs. Over the past several years much work to the infrastructure has been completed, including a 1/2-mile woodland trail, parking areas, irrigation lines and more. Amid the construction, our garden staff and volunteers planted hundreds of trees, shrubs, perennials and bulbs. Our current plant collection is a mixture of exotic and native plants and will grow to incorporate many plants from the Ericaceae family that thrive in the acidic soil found here at Clary Gardens.