Sarah's Garden

"The Upper Garden is a national treasure, and a very rare and fragile artifact. What's incredibly special about the garden is that it is not a reproduction but a real, surviving fragment of the past…"

—Scott Kunst, Landscape Preservation Consultant and Historian.

Sarah Davis's starburst garden was unique in Bloomington and perhaps the Midwest because it was patterned after classical Italian gardens of the 17th century and formal English gardens of the 18th century. It is a unique, original garden that has the same location, design, pathways and beds, and at least seven original plants dating back to its creation in 1872.