See eagles and pick your own fruit at these Georgia gardens. How to go this summer

William Khoury, the superintendent of Massee Lane Gardens, picked a big dark green leaf and crushed it in his hands. Then he put it up to his nose before he held it out.

“What does this smell like?” he asked.

It smelled like peanut butter. The leaf came from what is informally known as a peanut butter tree, one of the features of the Massee Lane Gardens children’s garden.

Khoury is one of three people who maintain the gardens and he holds the garden’s history in his head.

The gardens sit on 160 acres and hold “one of the world’s finest collections of camellias,” which are flowering plants, according to its website. The place in Fort Valley also gives its 100,000 annual visitors an opportunity to see wildlife, pick fruit and admire the country’s largest collection of porcelain.

Massee Lane Gardens serves as the headquarters of the American Camellia Society, a non-profit whose funding mostly comes from donations and a trust.

Along with the camellias, there are several other gardens to visit, including the Children’s and Rose gardens.

Which gardens to see this summer

During the spring and summer Khoury recommends visiting the Environmental Garden, Japanese Garden, and Children’s Garden.

The Japanese garden is a small, serene space built in 1985. It has a koi pond and is one of Massee Lane Gardens’ main attractions.

The Environmental Garden is larger, with multiple small sections including a woodland area. It contains a large pond and all of its plants are native to Georgia. Khoury said the staff take a hands-off approach to gardening there, only intervening occasionally to benefit wildlife or to remove non-native plants.

Irises bloom there in the spring, and water lilies are the main attraction in the summer. Ducks, foxes, bald eagles, golden eagles, and other animals can sometimes be seen in the garden, Khoury said.

The Children’s Garden is filled with tropical and tropical-looking plants such as hibiscus and palm trees. The air has a sweet floral smell, and it’s at its best in the summertime, Khoury said.

The garden is usually covered with butterflies by August, Khoury said. It has lemongrass that smells like candy, and ginger plants with leaves that smell like spice.

It also has tangerine trees with fruits that taste like lemonade and trees with lemons as big as grapefruit. Many of the fruits ripen around November and visitors and staff members are welcome to pick them.

“There’s always something different going on, you never know what you’re gonna run into,” Khoury said.

America’s largest porcelain collection

The porcelain collection at Massee Lane Gardens started as a single donation from Mrs. William Parks Stevens, The collection grew to become the largest in the country after others, hearing of Parks Stevens’ gift, began donating their own.

The extensive collection now numbers about 800 pieces of porcelain and includes several two- and four-of-a-kind items, Khoury said.

All of the items are Boehm porcelain. The collection includes a large bald eagle, the Eagle of Freedom I, along with various other animals including a California condor and an ivory-billed woodpecker.

“It kind of snowballed into what we have now,” Khoury wrote in an email.

The history of Massee Lane Gardens

Massee Lane Gardens started with David C. Strother, who bought the property from Needham Massee’s plantation in the early 1930s, said Khoury.

Strother lived in downtown Fort Valley, and had a caretaker who lived on and took care of the grounds. After a storm blew over pecan trees there, Strother, who had been admiring the camellias of downtown Marshal, told the caretaker to plant a camellia, said Khoury.

From there, Strother started collecting camellias and in 1945 became a founding member of the American Camellia Society, which was started in Macon by local camellia collectors, Khoury said.

After outgrowing office space twice, the society started looking for permanent headquarters. The organization considered Tallahassee, but Strother thought it should stay in the state where it was founded. So he donated his gardens as a place for the society’s headquarters in 1966. The original headquarters building serves as the society’s administration building today.

The garden has grown in the past almost 60 years and now occupies more of the 160-acre property that still includes some pecan trees. Camellias are its main attraction, and the gardens get most of their visitors when the shrubs bloom between February and March, Khory said.

Massee Lane Gardens hours, location

The gardens are open year-round Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and on Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. off Massee Lane Road. Admission for adults is $10 and free for children. The garden is located at 100 Massee Lane Road, Fort Valley, Georgia.