Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985) was already a recognized garden designer and writer when, in 1948, she moved from Raleigh to Charlotte, NC, and began building the house and making a garden.  Lawrence, the first woman graduate in landscape architecture at North Carolina State University is regarded as a preeminent figure in the region’s horticultural history.  As she wrote in an autobiographical essay published posthumously in the collection A Garden of One’s Own, Lawrence quickly learned, “that a knowledge of plant material for the South could not be got in the library, most of the literature of horticulture being for a different climate, and that I would have to grow the plants in my garden and learn about them for myself.”  Her books and articles on what she learned constitute a curriculum on gardening in the South and a distinguished library of literary garden writing.

Lawrence’s garden, where she learned and reported many of her lessons, is modest in size (just 70’ x 225’) and located in a historic neighborhood, near Wing Haven Gardens and Bird Sanctuary.  It has a formal design, with five intersecting gravel paths outlining four informally mixed borders still filled with a significant number of her plants.  A small woodland stands at the back of the property.

In 1984, Lawrence, in declining health, moved to Maryland.  Two years later, the property was purchased by its current owner, Mary Lindeman "Lindie" Wilson.  Recognizing the significance of the property and being an accomplished gardener herself, Wilson has sensitively maintained the integrity of Lawrence’s garden.  The structure is essentially the same and as much as sixty percent of Lawrence’s own plantings continue to prosper.