Reynolda Gardens is a four-acre formal garden designed as part of the original estate formerly owned and developed by the R. J. Reynolds family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The gardens, as well as the rest of the estate, which included a working farm and village, were developed in the early 1900s when the family decided to leave its residence in the city and move to what was then a rural location. The estate, known as Reynolda, was the primary residence for R. J. Reynolds and his wife Katharine Smith Reynolds until their deaths in 1918 and 1924, respectively. Their children continued to live on the estate for a number of years. In the mid 1930s, the Reynolds' daughter Mary and her husband, Charles Babcock, bought control of the property from the other children and managed it for approximately twenty years. Aerial c.1920, shows a portion of the formal garden (bottom left). This photo taken by Sears, documents the historic setting for the garden.   Since 1958 the estate, including the gardens, has been in the ownership of Wake Forest University (WFU). The house and surrounding twenty acres are managed by Reynolda House, Inc., now known as Reynolda House, Museum of American Art. The house is open to the public and is interpreted as both a house and art museum, featuring work by significant American artists of the twentieth century. The primary designer of Reynolda Gardens was Thomas Sears (1880-1966), a Landscape Architect from Philadelphia. The gardens, though designed and built relatively early in his career, were one of Sears' best known works, and a place that he revisited many times after the initial installation. His layout for the gardens is geometric and symmetrical with well-defined spaces and vistas, densely planted with perennials, annuals, bulbs, shrubs and allées of trees. Originally, about half were working vegetable and fruit gardens with a formal layout and borders of ornamental plants and lawn. The house and grounds are typical of the Country Place era of the early twentieth century. The formal gardens are also typical of the time, though unusual in their location away from the main house with easy access from an adjacent public road. This allowed Katharine Reynolds, who oversaw and managed much of the planning and development of the entire estate, to share her garden with the larger community. Overgrown Boxwood hedges at the project's onset in 1995. The unmanaged vegetation destroyed historic visual and spatial relationships. The gardens had been actively maintained and managed by the university for a number of years, but over time, numerous problems arose -- mature and declining trees, overgrown vegetation, crumbling walls and fountains, deteriorating structures, overused pathways, and poor drainage. Due to inappropriate additions and piecemeal replacement of plantings and materials, the gardens no longer conveyed the spacious, open feel and formal visual relationships that were the intent of the original design. Money was raised by WFU, the garden staff, and Friends of Reynolda Gardens, the volunteer support group to reverse this downward trend. A construction budget of $1.2 million plus a $1 million endowment for future maintenance was made available for the project. The goal was to develop a rehabilitation plan that recognized and respected the historical significance of the gardens in the context of present-day management and maintenance concerns.