Chanticleer Garden is a 48-acre botanical garden built on the grounds of the Rosengarten estate at 786 Church Road in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Located on Philadelphia's historic Main Line, Chanticleer retains a domestic scale and welcomes visitors for relaxation, walking, and picnics. The grounds became open to the public in 1993. Visitors are welcome to tour the estate seasonally, from April through October. The house and grounds were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

History

The estate was built in 1912 as a summer cottage for Christine Penrose and Adolph G. Rosengarten Sr., the latter of whom was the head of Rosengarten & Sons, a Philadelphia pharmaceutical manufacturer that his family had founded in 1822 to produce quinine. The company merged with Merck & Co in 1927. Upon inheriting the estate in 1946, their son, Adolph G. Rosengarten Jr. established a foundation to ensure that Chanticleer would be developed as a public garden. "Chanticleer" means rooster in French. The entrance gate is crested with a carved-stone rooster; other references to roosters can be found throughout the estate. Rosengarten Jr. hired Christopher Woods, a native of Britain, to develop the garden. After Rosengarten Jr.'s death in 1990, Woods became the founding Executive Director and began a radical revision of the garden. He tore down Mr. Rosengarten's stone house to create what is now known as "The Ruin". Today, Chanticleer consists of a collection of open lawns and large trees. Different sections of the botanical gardens include:

The grounds