Gardens Overview
From the wafting scents of sweet olive trees to the expansive azaleas blossoms, ginger lilies and magnolias to the vivid summer crepe myrtle, the landscape at the Shadows-on-the-Teche is a sensuous reminder of the artist Weeks Hall that shaped and molded it, as well as the creative hand of nature in the lush semi-tropical Gulf South. Though occupying only two and a half acres of the original 158-acre plantation, the remaining gardens and house still provide a mystique and allure for its visitors.
Then,
as now, the predominating features of the landscape were the live oaks
which canopy the property. While many of the live oaks were planted by
Hall's ancestors, it was Hall who added the azaleas and increased the
number of camellias. In 1940 he wrote that in 1922, "There was not
an Azalea of any sort in the place, and I have put on three thousand and
added about sixty Camellia trees."
Because The Shadows is one of the most photographed properties in the south, there is a wealth of historical images to document the property. Hall, who was an accomplished photographer, documented the house thoroughly. Also I. A. Martin, a well-respected photographer from New Iberia, photographed the entire site in the 1920's. The Martin photographs combined with Hall's make up a fascinating collection of twentieth-century views of the landscape.
Of the time prior to Weeks Hall, there is also evidence. In the collection at the Shadows are a pair of watercolors by Adrien Persac which depict the front and back views of the Shadows in 1861. Also in the collection is an 1878 watercolor by H. Hattendorf, which records changes to the property when compared with the Persac painting from seventeen years earlier (at the dawn of the Civil War years).
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