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The Kinzie Garden in Bethesda is a 1-1/2 acre property resembling a park.
It contains hundreds of azaleas and specimen plantings. The garden surrounds the home
of Jane Kinzie, the founder and co-owner of Kinzie Farms Nursery & Landscaping.
Jane purchased the house in 1975 from Art White who under the tutelage of George
Harding, a founding member of the Azalea Society, planted many of the heritage
azaleas on the property. Jane propagates and grows hundreds of azaleas in containers
in 12 greenhouses at her Maryland Farm, from which she supplies garden centers and
landscapers in the Washington area.
The garden is on a long slope with many winding gravel paths under a canopy of mature
white oaks, shagbark hickories, American beech, and hemlocks. Understory trees and
shrubs include dogwoods (flowering, Kousa, and alternate-leaved), eastern redbud,
Japanese snowbell, and Japanese maples), Japanese andromeda, mountain laurel,
camellias, evergreen and deciduous hollies, specimen conifers, heavenly bamboo
including 'Harbour Dwarf'), a number of rhododendrons and hundreds of evergreen
and deciduous azaleas.
Ground covers include native wildflowers, ferns, and hostas.
A pond on the slope serves as centerpiece for a number of low, late-blooming azaleas
and attracts various forms of wildlife.
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