Hops at the History Center: Smith-Benning House Garden with Robert Craig

Garden Preservation and Development at the Smith-Benning House:  Influences from Sir Edwin Lutyens, Bernard Maybeck, and Ji Cheng

This is the first of two talks on the 45-year preservation and rehabilitation of the c. 1883 Smith-Benning House, with Part 1 focusing on the landscape. Dr. Craig will discuss efforts to preserve the Victorian east garden and create the south garden, now defined by a 65-foot stone-and-oak pergola completed in 2025.

The pergola—the major feature of the side garden—was inspired by the work of two Arts and Crafts architects: Sir Edwin Lutyens and Bernard Maybeck. Its design draws particularly from Lutyens’s pergola at Hestercombe Gardens and Maybeck’s Faculty Club. Inspired by Lutyens’s geometric garden layouts, the Smith-Benning House south garden—once a neglected space bordered by the house verandah and a property line created decades after the house was built—has been transformed into an ordered composition of reclaimed-brick paths, piers, and low garden walls.

The garden is highlighted by a pergola constructed of Tennessee stone and massive hand-hewn white oak timbers reclaimed from 1840s Ohio barns. Additional historic materials include recycled Stone Mountain granite curbstones, hexagonal sidewalk pavers, statuary, garden seats, and bird baths, all carefully arranged according to principles of axis and geometry.

Look for the complimentary August lecture, Part 2, which will focus on the preservation and rehabilitation of the Smith-Benning House itself. The project reflects the Craigs’ broader preservation work, including the restoration of ten other Atlanta houses and a derelict 1920s commercial building, culminating in the rescue of one of DeKalb County’s most notable historic homes: the Smith-Benning House in Candler Park.