Washington Oaks Gardens State Park in Flagler County, Florida

Photograph: Washington Oaks State Gardens.jpg by Averette · CC BY 3.0 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Flagler County attraction

Washington Oaks Gardens State Park

Flagler County · Atlantic Coast

Formal gardens on the Matanzas River and a beach of coquina boulders on the ocean, inside one 425-acre park.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Washington Oaks Gardens State Park covers 425 acres on State Road A1A near Palm Coast, running from the Matanzas River across to the Atlantic. Louise Powis Clark, wife of the industrialist Owen D. Young, bought the land in 1936 as a winter home, named it Washington Oaks and laid out the formal gardens herself. After her husband died in 1962 she gave the property to Florida in 1964, on the condition that the gardens be kept as she had made them, and they still are: roses, camellias and azaleas under live oaks and magnolias. Her house is now the visitor center. The other half of the park is the beach, and it is unlike the rest of the northeast Florida shore. Coquina rock outcrops break through the sand in slabs and hollows, dark against the water, and at low tide people walk out among them. Between the two sides the park holds barrier island habitats, coastal scrub, hammock and tidal marsh, with sea turtles and manatees offshore and bald eagles overhead. There is fishing on both the river and the ocean, cycling, walking trails and picnic areas. The gate opens at 8 in the morning and closes at sundown, and there is a charge to enter

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official place website ↗

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