by Joyce T. Moses, Past President of Raleigh Garden Club, 2016-2018

Isabelle Bowen Henderson

(May 23, 1899-May 19, 1969)

Isabelle Worth Bowen was born in Raleigh, N. C., the eldest of the six daughters of Arthur Finn Bowen, bursar and then treasurer of North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering (now North Carolina State University) for almost four decades. She received top honors for her artwork at Peace College in Raleigh, N. C. before traveling to New York to study painting at The New York School of Applied and Fine Arts (now The Parsons Academy), an d art education at Columbia University. She completed her studies in painting at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where her work is part of the Academy's collection. After graduating, she taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the fine Arts and at Wake Forest College. Henderson also taught art in the Raleigh Public School System in the early 1920’s. She is one of the founders, in 1927, of the North Carolina Museum of Art, the earliest state art museum in the country, when temporary art exhibition spaces opened in the Agriculture building in Raleigh. Isabelle was a well-known portrait painter and exhibited paintings and photographs at the North Carolina Museum of Art and has one drawing in the permanent collection. 

During the early years from 1930-1931, Isabelle was Recording Secretary of the Raleigh Garden Club. For their Plant Sale, she provided 300 packets of flower seeds of 15 varieties to be sold for the club’s most outstanding needs. In 1932 Isabelle married Edgar H. Henderson (PhD., Harvard) and moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts where she exhibited alongside John C. Johansen, Dudley Murphey, and other internationally known painters. In 1935 her work was the subject of an individual show at the Lawrence Art Museum in Williamstown. While in Williamstown she began to collect the early American furniture and to hook traditional rugs. The couple separated shortly after their return to Raleigh in 1937.

In October of 1935, the Garden Club of North Carolina sponsored a four day “Garden School” in Raleigh. A presentation was made by Isabelle Henderson, then living in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was entitled ‘Color in the Garden’.  At the November 1936 meeting of the Garden Club, The News and Observer noted that Mrs. Henderson, Vice President of the Williamstown Garden Club, would use her color charts to illustrate her talks on ‘Color in the Garden’. Her talks also focused on perennial borders.

Upon moving back to Raleigh in 1937 Isabelle resumed her gardening knowledge and enthusiasm in the Raleigh Garden Club and immediately set about designing her own Williamsburg enclave on a secluded 2.1 acres at 213 Oberlin Road, adjacent to her childhood home, the A. F. Bowen residence at the end of Fernell Lane. Drawing on her mother’s love of gardening and her own Arts & Crafts education, Isabelle synthesized Colonial architectural forms with English garden designs and American folk traditions.  In addition to her importance as a fine artist, Henderson ranks as one of the earliest progenitors of the cult of Williamsburg. She supervised the relocation and remodeling of a Victorian cottage, built a carriage house and herb house around a brick terrace, and developed a display garden, herb garden, and working garden, all organized as a carefully composed ensemble which reproduced a working colonial estate. The entire design was her concept, carried out by various local craftsmen whose names are unknown. From this estate, she was one of a group of art enthusiasts in Raleigh who helped to promote art museums, art societies and the arts and crafts movement, all the while increasing her own reputation as an artist, a professional horticulturalist, and a sponsor and collector of folk crafts. From all accounts, it is clear that well before laying out her front border in 1937, Henderson was an authoritative proponent of using an artist’s appreciation of color theories in garden design.

The National Register of Historic Places describes her work as “a composition of a re-sited turn-of-the century house and auxiliary building…integrated into a landscape of display and working gardens, and disposed around a large, shaded brick terrace from which bricked and bordered walks lead outward to the gardens. The arrangement of buildings, fences, walks, and plant materials creates a calculated informality while maintaining a palpable hierarchy of evocative spaces, views, and processions”. Almost immediately her front garden became a Raleigh landmark and was featured in each of the three Spring tours sponsored by the Raleigh Garden Club between 1938 and 1941. In April of 1938 Isabelle Bowen Henderson's self-described "English perennial border" was exhibited to the public for the first time with 11 other gardens in the Raleigh Garden Club's annual Spring garden tours in conjunction with the Garden Club of North Carolina’s Garden Fortnight Tours of the state’s finest gardens. These gardens represented a cross section of residential landscape design in a city. During that period, only two gardens were on the tour all three years: the garden of Mrs. Isabelle Henderson and the garden of Mrs. James Johnson, one of Henderson’s five sisters. 

In May of 1938, Henderson wrote an article published in the News and Observer in which she illustrated her understanding of and empathy for the principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement: "In the home where one finds order and simplicity, things perfectly suited to their use, genuine simple things rather than cheap imitations of elegance, one finds a place where children grow up with a feeling for beauty." She went on to quote John Ruskin, the leading English writer and art critic: "what we like determines what we are, and to teach taste is inevitably to teach character”. Henderson shared her appreciation of Ruskin's principles with another woman, Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), who brought gardening into the Arts and Crafts Movement. For over thirty years the Henderson gardens figured prominently in the Raleigh Garden Club's activities and grew as a focus of horticultural interest for North Carolina and beyond.

The Front Garden. (1937-1938) Described by Isabelle Henderson as "an English-style perennial border", this showcase garden lies east of the studio wing, between it and Oberlin Road. In 1967 the front garden was featured in Elizabeth Culbertson Waugh's North Carolina's Capital, Raleigh. Screening from the road is achieved in two tiers: first by an English ivy-entwined wire fence, and second by a tall hedge of pungent elaeagnus. A long putty-colored board fence separates the garden from the adjacent driveway and parking alcove and provides the southern exposure desirable for wall gardens. Originating at a height of seven feet in a brief north/south segment along Oberlin Road, the fence turns to frame a door, then continues west to terminate at a height of three-and-one-half feet at the brick walk which leads from the toe of the driveway, south along the studio wing of the main house. "Wide enough for two busy wheelbarrows to pass or for three children to race on it without disturbing the tulips, irises, or whatever else is bordering it in season", a gently curving walk leads east/west from the front porch steps of the main house, past the steps of the studio, and down the front garden, terminating near Oberlin Road. This and other walks were paved in recycled Wake County brick, first in a basketweave pattern, later relayed in a running bond. Subordinate brick walks branch off south toward the Shingle Barn, north toward the carriage house, and west toward to kitchen porch steps of the main house. An unpaved beaten-earth path branches off from the studio wing steps, heading west toward the gated picket fence which retards public access to the more utilitarian garden spaces occupying the western half of the Henderson property, passing the smilax draped sitting porch that runs across the front of the main house. A specimen flowering crabapple, underplanted with evergreen groundcovers and choice seasonal bulbs, stands as a focal point against a backdrop of hedge bamboo, fig trees, and winter jasmine planted alongside the barn foundation.

The Back Garden. (1937 onward) In the southwest quadrant of her property, Henderson developed nine production and trial-oriented plots which supported her display gardens, flower show entries, kitchen, dining table, and pantry. There she also conducted public demonstrations on plant propagation and Victory gardening. Three paths lead Westward from the terrace, one from either side of the herb house and one obliquely from the dining porch. The central path is paved in running bond brick, the other two are packed earth. The oblique path passes a specimen Japanese weeping cherry underplanted with seasonal bulbs and evergreen groundcovers, then opens onto a grass allee on a strong east/west axis terminating at the intersection of curvilinear beds faced with fruit trees. ornamental trees, and shrubs. Subordinate north/south grass allees establish a grid of rectilinear plots, each of which is bordered by a dense growth of dwarf mondo grass, replacing earlier brick borders. The central brick path terminates in front of the tool house at a small lawn where croquet was played and laundry hung. Looking west from the dining porch, the bordered plots contain, in series, roses, perennials and annuals, trial seedlings of hybridized narcissus, iris, hemerocallis (daylilies), vegetables and fruit. The latter plot includes blueberry, damson plum, and Japanese persimmon.

The Herb Garden. (ca. 1937) Just north of the toe of the driveway, the herb garden is concealed from passers-by on Oberlin Road to the east by the carriage house, the front door of which opens directly onto the garden. Within the microclimate of this sheltered zone, slightly raised beds result from the geometry of narrow basketweave brick paths with raised edging. Including species considered marginally hardy in piedmont North Carolina, the garden's noteworthy contents include bay and mountain laurel, star anise, chinese tea camellia, banana shrub and a collection of red and white primroses (cowslips). The garden's diamond-shaped center is paved rather than planted, enabling seating within this intimate, fragrant space, while within view of the broad pecan-canopied terrace, the sunlit grid of the trial beds and fruit orchard beyond, and of Japonica camellias.

In addition to the integration of the herb garden into the complex and the placement of the front and working gardens in emulation of a working Colonial estate, the landscape design significance of the Isabelle Bowen Henderson House and Gardens rests on the artistic design of the front garden. Here, Henderson was influenced by the painterly, naturalistic aesthetics of Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson, both working and writing in England in the early twentieth century and popularized in the United States through publications. Based upon written accounts and recollections, it is apparent that of all the gardens on the Raleigh Garden Tours of 1938, 1939, and 1941, Henderson's garden was the most avant garde, due largely to her training as an artist and art educator in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and her national circle of intellectual friends which gave her a knowledge of contemporary American landscape design trends.

Yearbooks and Scrapbooks of the Raleigh Garden Club from the1930's and 40's indicate that Henderson judged regularly at the annual club flower show. Also, for the 1940 Spring Flower Show, Isabelle was Staging an Art Director. In addition, Henderson discussed garden topics on the club's 'Garden School of the Air', broadcast in Raleigh on WP1F radio (predecessor of the Weekend Gardener on WPTF radio today), including 'The Garden in Midsummer' (1939), 'Color in the Garden' (1940), and 'Flower Arrangement for the Flower Show' (1941). In later years of 1963-64 Isabelle also gave demonstrations on how to start plants from seeds. 

It is interesting to note that Elizabeth Lawrence, who was a prominent North Carolina gardener and international horticulture writer of the mid 1900’s grew up approximately three blocks from the Bowen home and were childhood friends. Both she and Isabelle were active members of the Raleigh Garden Club during the late 1930s and 40’s. In A Southern Garden, published in 1942 by Elizabeth Lawrence, she cites Henderson’s 12 years of garden records in establishing blooming dates for flowering shrubs.

The Henderson garden is one of only two gardens included in North Carolina's Capital, Raleigh, which documents the city's important landmarks from 1760 until 1967. The accompanying text describes it as "one of the most beautiful and imaginative gardens in North Carolina". Lewis Clarke, FASLA, who worked briefly with Henderson on elements of the front garden notes:

There is no doubt this garden should be preserved for it is the last of an era now totally gone. Perhaps swept away in Raleigh by the School of Design in its heyday of contemporary design influence in N. C. in the 50's and 60's. Isabelle's garden and that of Baker Wynn[e] now demolished under the YMCA parking lot) were to my knowledge the only two of this period in Raleigh. For an intown property of this character Isabelle's garden was extensive and varied. This garden and layout, even with its relocated buildings is the best one existing with real concern for historical design integrity, and a sincere dedication to plant species propogation of the period. 

While establishing the front garden, Henderson began hybridizing perennials in the working garden, creating new varieties and transplanting the finest specimens into the front garden. She maintained at least 527 varieties of hemerocallis, approximately 600 varieties of irises, naturalizing hyacinthoides hispanica and in 1951 received the highest award of the National Council of State Garden Clubs (The National Horticultural Award) for her hybridizing work with irises and hemerocallis. Her articles discussing both technical and aesthetic concerns in growing a wide range of plant materials were published often in the local press from the 1930’s on, and by state and national horticultural organizations including the American Hemerocallis Society and the N. C. Hemerocallis Society, both of which she was a charter member, and the Garden Journal of the New York Botanical Garden.

Karin Kaiser's NCSU landscape architecture master's thesis The Studio, Residence, and Garden of Isabelle Bowen (1985) catalogues the more than 100 perennial, ornamental and fruiting shrub, and tree specimens surviving in the front garden. A comparison of the front garden today with newspaper photographs as it appeared for the Statewide Tour of Homes in 1938 demonstrates that the principal design elements are intact. During her 32 years at this address, Henderson made a number of refinements to the building/garden ensemble, but it is clear that her original Arts and Crafts sensibility applied to Colonial Revival architectural forms and to Robinsonian English landscape design elements that remained the guiding themes, preserving the integrity of the architectural and landscape elements. https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU676926.

The legacy continues! Isabelle Bowen Henderson died in 1969 leaving her house and gardens to her sister, Phyllis Bowen Riley. Phyllis really didn’t have the means to maintain the property, and the state unsuccessfully tried twice from about 1972 -1977 to condemn it because they wanted to widen the nearby road from two lanes to five lanes. Fast forward 40 years later, this historic property and surrounding neighborhoods are thriving with walkable, tree-lined streets. Today, it is the residence of Russ Stephenson and his wife, Ellen. Russ is the great nephew of Isabelle Bowen Henderson and the great grandson of Phyllis Bowen Riley. In the 1980’s Russ assisted with the property’s National Register of Historic Places Nomination. Russ is an active member of the Raleigh Garden Club since 2017 and is currently Co-chair of the Horticultural Committee. Due to his and Ellen’s generosity, the Raleigh Garden Club has held three successful public Spring house and garden tours in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Russ was also a guest speaker at the April 2018 meeting where he presented ‘Isabelle Bowen Henderson: Raleigh Artist and Horticulturist 1899 – 1969’. Russ and Ellen have embarked on a restoration of the property according to the color photos and slides that Henderson produced in the 1950’s and 60’s. The over 30 years of physical records of her work at her Oberlin Road home is a treasury of early 20th century American garden design and architecture. 

In 2019, the Isabelle Bowen Henderson House and Gardens received the prestigious Minnette C. Duffy Landscape Preservation Award. This is the highest honor given for the preservation, restoration or maintenance of landscapes, gardens, streetscapes, or grounds related to historic structures. This award recognizes the importance of the landscape in the preservation of historic structures. First presented in 1987, the award is made possible by the family of the late Minnette Chapman Duffy of New Bern, whose leadership contributed to the reconstruction of Tryon Palace.

Isabelle Bowen Henderson House and Gardens

Notes Keyed to Site Plan - (which is the third image at the top of this post.)

1 The original 2-room dwelling, now part of the main house, originally stood here, with its front door facing Oberlin Road. It was built in the mid-19th century as part of the freedman’s community of Oberlin Village. A Victorian porch and turret addition were added circa 1900. In 1937 Henderson’s father, A. F. Bowen, purchased this parcel and moved the dwelling 150 feet west to its current location and rotated it 90 degrees so the front door faced south, toward the back door of the Bowen home at the end of Ferndell Lane. (See Historical Note below tracing this property’s Oberlin Village roots.)

2 Henderson used tall board fences like this one and to create outdoor rooms. By keeping the top of the fence level as the ground rises to the west, this fence is tall enough at Oberlin Road for a door, but short enough at the Carriage House to reveal views into the Front Garden.

3 Henderson’s front display garden reflects the English mixed perennial border style developed by William Robinson and Gertude Jekyll and popularized in America in the 1920’s by Beatrix Farrand. The Front Garden was first opened to the public in 1938 in conjunction with a statewide garden tour organized by the NC Garden Club. The Bowen garden was also on the tour and stood immediately to the south. The Front Garden was featured in North Carolina’s Capital Raleigh, published in 1967, and described as “one of the most beautiful and imaginative gardens in North Carolina”

4 The stone paved section of the Front Garden walk is part of the original Bowen garden. Henderson incorporated this section her design when the Bowen homeplace was sold by the six daughters in 1950.

5 This is a reconstruction of the carriage barn that stood at the rear of the Bowen homeplace. Henderson added the tall north-facing windows so the barn could be used as a second studio space.

6 The gable roof of the original 2-room dwelling is visible here.

7 The Victorian porch and turret were added circa 1900, when the dwelling stood on Oberlin Road.

8 The Front Room features Henderson’s hand painted wall mural, reproducing the map (Mouzon, 1775) and heraldry (Collet, 1770) of the Colonial Carolinas. A photograph of this room was featured nationally in House and Garden Magazine in 1942. The flanking bookcases contain the combined Bowen and Henderson libraries, exhibiting Henderson’s interests in her Art & Crafts education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts, culinary arts, North Carolina history and horticulture. Henderson grew up with garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence and Jacques Busbee, who revitalized the Jugtown Pottery tradition. The bookcases include Lawrence’s inscribed volumes and pieces from Henderson’s Jugtown Pottery collection. Henderson led efforts to assemble the NC History Museum’s first Jugtown Pottery collection.

9 Henderson added this Studio when the house was moved in 1937. The space is dominated by a large bank of north-facing windows, placed high in the wall to provide the best possible light for painting. In 1938 a full page article in the News & Observer was devoted to her growing prominence as a portrait painter. Ben Forest Williams, the first curator of the N. C. Museum of Art has estimated that she produced over one thousand portraits throughout the Eastern United States. Her works are included in the permanent collection of the N. C. Museum of Art and in the State Supreme Court Building in Raleigh.

10 The Carriage House was built in the early 1940’s in the Second Colonial Revival (Williamsburg) style as a two-car garage. It was renovated circa 1950 as a residence for Henderson’s sister, Phyllis Riley.

11 The Herb Garden is laid out in the geometric Elizabethan style found in Colonial times.

12 The Brick Terrace is the central outdoor room, bounded by dwellings, outbuildings and fences, and shaded by a massive pecan tree. Signatures in the hand made brick pavers are scattered around the terrace.

13 Henderson designed the Herb House, with its broad-shouldered chimney, as a Colonial summer kitchen. She displayed pottery, early American crafts and dried herbs inside.

14 Henderson purchased a parcel to the north circa 1950 and moved part of the dwelling into this position to finish the terrace enclosure and provide a Guest House for visitors.

15 The Compost area is an essential element of Henderson’s working and display gardens.

16 The Tool Shed was reconstructed in 1996 after being demolished by a fallen elm tree during Hurricane Fran.

17 The Back Garden was Henderson’s working garden where she hybridized daylilies, irises and other perennials. At various times Henderson maintained 527 daylilly and 600 iris varieties. In 1951, Henderson won the National Horticultural Award, the highest award given by the National Council of State Garden Clubs, for her “permanent and creative contribution to horticulture”.

Historical Note: The Henderson House and Gardens are on what was previously Lot Number 2 in the village of Oberlin, a freedman’s village then located two miles west of Raleigh. Sheriff Timothy Lee, whose home stood at Hillsborough Street and Oberlin Road, sold the property in 1869 to Lemuel Hinton, one of Oberlin’s earliest settlers. Shortly before the tenth and final payment was due in 1879, Hinton borrowed $75 for six months with a note secured by two oxen (“color ginger brown and red”), a milk cow (“color dark brown brindle, named Barnhill”), a wagon and farming implements. In 1897, Hinton and his wife Lurina sold the property (where they were living) to his daughter and son-in-law, Lemetta and Allen Haywood. The Haywoods lived here until 1931 when Allen Haywood died and the property went into foreclosure. Lemetta was the sister of Eleanor Hinton Graves, who with her husband Willis built the Graves-Fields House in the late 1880s. Preservation North Carolina is working to relocate and renovate that endangered house, which is further down Oberlin Road. Both the Graves and the Haywoods have many notable descendants across the country. Learn more about Preservation NC’s Oberlin Village research and preservation work here: http://bit.ly/PNC-OberlinVillage

Link to more historical photos, documents and the full National Register Nomination: https://localwiki.org/raleigh/Isabelle_Bowen_Henderson_House_%26_Gardens