Charleston: Magnolia Plantation + Gardens

Our first stop on our mini Charleston road trip (before we visited the Angel Oak) was to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, which is located about 30 min north of the historic downtown. Nearby Drayton Hall was closed for maintenance, which they do only one week of the year (lucky us!), but Magnolia definitely satisfied my historic home requirement for the day.

Magnolia claims to be "Charleston's most visited plantation," and it's the oldest public tourist site in the Lowcountry, as well as the oldest public gardens in America. The grounds were open to the public in 1870, but the plantation was founded in 1676 by the Drayton family and is still owned by descendants today. Magnolia has America's oldest and largest collection of camellias and azaleas, and even in February there were already beautiful blooms.

There have been three main houses on the property throughout its history, the first two of which burned down. The house that you can currently tour was built prior to the Revolutionary War near Summerville, South Carolina and floated down the Ashley River to Magnolia. It was built onto the first floor of the second house, which was all that remained after General Sherman burned his was through the South during the Civil War.

The property borders the Ashley River, and includes a swamp, ponds, several bridges and a petting zoo. The deer were super aggressive, the ducks were jerks and apparently the peacocks startle easily, but the goats were super chill and I fell in love with the very chubby PigPig, despite having eaten many of his relatives during our trip.

Bonus! On the road to Magnolia, we passed Timbo's Hot Boiled Peanuts trailer, which unfortunately appears to have gone out of business despite having an "OPEN" sign in the window. I'm bummed that I wasn't able to try a boiled peanut, which, when it comes out of an Airstream on bricks from a man named Timbo, is surely as authentically Southern as it can get.