Wash Away Winter with Blooming Azaleas

December 12th, 2017

   One way I like to “shorten” winter is by getting out of the snow-laden North and spending at least a few weeks somewhere in the South where it’s green instead of white (or dreary brown).

Azaleas in full bloom at Callaway Gardens in Georgia.
Credit: Callaway Gardens

   This coming winter, you’ll be able to join me on a 10-day escape to New Orleans and gardens of the Deep South.

   This Lowee’s Group Tours bus trip is timed for when we’re really fed up with the cold toward winter’s end (March 15-24, 2018) and hopefully when the gardens down there are awash in azaleas.

   Azaleas are a southern favorite. In Louisiana and southern Alabama and Mississippi, they bloom four to six weeks ahead of ours – typically in mid to late March.

   Assuming we hit it right, you’ll see two of the biggest, most glorious displays of blooming azaleas anywhere – in the wooded trails of Georgia’s Callaway Gardens and throughout Alabama’s Bellingrath Gardens.

   Although New Orleans is the main destination of this trip, we’ll be seeing a whole lot more than azaleas and bourbon shrimp.

   For one thing, this region is loaded with pre-Civil-War plantations – many of which have nice gardens and are open for touring. We plan to see two of them: Nottoway (near New Orleans and dating to 1859) and Rosalie (in Natchez, Miss., and home of the Daughters of the American Revolution).

   On the way down, in addition to seeing the amazing Callaway and Bellingrath gardens, we’ll stop for visits at Virginia Tech’s Hahn Horticulture Garden and the 295-acre South Carolina Botanical Garden at Clemson University.

   On the way back, we’ll see Thomas Jefferson’s country home and retreat – Poplar Forest in western Virginia – as well as the flower-lined paths and rock formations at Georgia’s Lookout Mountain and the caverns and 147-foot-tall waterfall at Ruby Falls near Chattanooga, Tenn.

The rose garden at New Orleans Botanical Garden.
Credit: New Orleans Botanical Garden

   For the three days in and around New Orleans, we’ll visit the area’s key gardens: the 12-acre, art-filled New Orleans Botanical Garden, the beautiful Longue Vue House and Gardens (started in 1935 by Ellen Biddle Shipman, the “dean of American women landscape architects”), and Audubon Park with its Audubon Park Lagoon, home of showy birds such as herons, egrets and cormorants.

   Chrissie Kelly, Lowee’s Group Tours owner, predicts that the favorite attraction, though, might well be the bayou tour of the famous Honey Island Swamp. It involves checking out the region’s very un-Pennsylvania-like native plants and wildlife via a flat-bottom boat. She says past travelers gave it rave reviews, so we had to include it here.

   And while in New Orleans, we’ll of course get to sample the famous Cajun food and allow some free time so you can customize a few of your own activities.

   The cost is $1,999 per person double, which includes transportation, hotels, admissions, and 17 meals.

   Lowee’s is taking bookings now. Come on along and see those azaleas blooming in March while everyone here is watching out for blizzard forecasts.

   More information and sign-ups are available by calling Lowee’s Group Tours at 717-657-9658 or toll-free 1-888-345-6933 or by emailing CKelly@Lowees.com.

   The day-by-day itinerary is listed on my Talks and Trips page.