Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park, Tallahassee

Maclay Gardens is a state park in Leon County classified as an Ornamental Garden, with Open-Fee public access in the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's July 2026 jurisdiction report (DEP Jurisdiction Report, July 2026).

The National Park Service record for the park's historic district gives the location as 3540 Thomasville Rd., Tallahassee (NPS National Register record). The park's approved management plan describes the entrance as off U.S. Highway 319, one mile north of the intersection with Interstate 10 (DEP Unit Management Plan, 2014).

The Maclay Gardens land is held by the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund and managed by the DEP Division of Recreation and Parks under Lease 3607, which the 2026 report shows running to January 22, 2067 (DEP Jurisdiction Report; Unit Management Plan). The jurisdiction report gives the park an inception date of March 31, 1953 (DEP).

The DEP July 2026 jurisdiction report lists the Maclay Gardens park at 1,170.19 acres, while the 2014 management plan said the park then contained 1,169 acres (DEP Jurisdiction Report; Unit Management Plan).

The gardens that give the park its name cover some 28 acres of the total, according to the plan, which says nearly one third of Lake Hall's 160 acres is within the park boundary and all of Lake Overstreet, about 124 acres, is inside it (Unit Management Plan). The plan describes the natural areas as mixed hardwoods and pines with slope forested ravines that harbor a number of imperiled plants (DEP plan).

Alfred Barmore Maclay bought the earlier Law plantation in 1923, used his Killearn Plantation mainly as a winter retreat and designed the ornamental gardens himself, according to the DEP management plan (Unit Management Plan).

The National Register nomination traces the property to an earlier plantation and building assembly developed in 1906; a gate column inscribed "Lac-Cal" near the visitor parking marks the main entrance to the house at that time (National Register nomination). After Maclay died in 1944, his wife, Louise Fleischmann Maclay, managed the gardens, tried to make them a self-sustaining tourist destination, and then donated 307 acres centered on the gardens to the state in 1953 (DEP plan).

The plan records that Killearn Gardens was renamed Alfred B. Maclay State Gardens in 1965 (DEP plan). The nomination describes a tablet in the Walled Garden that commemorates the gardens as a state park in 1956, a different year from the 1953 donation date in DEP's acquisition history (National Register nomination; DEP plan).

The formal Maclay Gardens described in the National Register nomination include the Camellia Walk, the Walled Garden, the Palm Garden and the Secret Garden (National Register nomination).

The brick Camellia Walk leads from the house to the Walled Garden, and the first camellia planted there, the "Aunt Jetty" variety, was brought from Baltimore to Tallahassee in the 1860s (nomination). The Walled Garden was built between 1923 and 1935, with plantings in geometric patterns on three terraced beds around a central pool (nomination).

East of the Walled Garden gate, the Palm Garden was begun in 1935 on a terraced slope 525 feet from Lake Hall, with a long rectangular pool bordered by clipped white azaleas; the view from the reflecting pool to Lake Hall is known as the "vista," or "Cypress Walk" (nomination). Southeast of the Walled Garden is the Secret Garden, which Maclay used as a hideaway, planted with wild ginger, holly fern, mahonia and tea olive (nomination). The broad lawn between the house and Lake Hall was planted in the summer of 1925 to give the house a lake view, and the same year work began on the brick House Walk from the garden gate to the residence (nomination). The Walled Garden pool holds a life-size bronzed sculpture of a century plant, and lead pigeons, doves, turkeys and peacocks in the garden are British antiques (nomination). Cypress trees along the Cypress Walk were removed in the 1960s or early 1970s because of insects and disease (nomination).

The DEP management plan lists swimming, fishing, boating, hiking, biking and horseback riding at Maclay Gardens, with development limited to picnicking and swimming facilities and support for trail activities (Unit Management Plan).

Lakes Hall and Overstreet provide habitat for freshwater fish, wildlife and migrating fowl, and the park is a designated stop on the Panhandle Section of the Great Florida Birding Trail and part of the Florida Greenways and Trails System (DEP plan). These facility notes come from the 2014 plan; the plan adds that a designated swimming area has been established near the picnic area on Lake Hall (DEP plan).

The Lake Overstreet land has two dates in the same plan. One passage says the adjacent Lake Overstreet property was bought in 1994 in partnership with the City of Tallahassee using Preservation 2000 funds, while another says Mrs. Maclay's nephew sold the 877 acre Overstreet Tract to the state in 1996 (DEP plan).

The park is listed as the Killearn Plantation Archeological and Historic District, National Register Information System ID 02000836, published August 16, 2002, under the criteria of event, architecture and engineering, and information potential (NPS National Register record).

The NPS record names landscape architecture, Black, agriculture, architecture, historic non-aboriginal and prehistoric among its areas of significance, with significant years of 1824 and 1923 (NPS record). The DEP plan says the district includes twenty-seven contributing prehistoric archaeological sites and six contributing historic archaeological house sites (DEP plan). It adds that Maclay employed many of the African Americans living on the plantation, whose work gradually shifted from agriculture to wage labor (DEP plan).

The approved Maclay Gardens management plan is dated February 2014, and the DEP Office of Park Planning page for the park lists that 2014 document, with the page last modified October 1, 2026 (DEP park planning documents).

For the 2013 presentation of the plan update, DEP's advisory listed proposals for a new trailhead near the park entrance, a paved shared-use trail to the Lake Overstreet Trailhead, a new fishing dock on Lake Hall, a new visitor center and wedding garden area near the garden entrance, and conversion of a former employee residence to an interpretive area on the tenant farmers who worked the land (DEP media advisory, August 14, 2013). That advisory set out proposals for public comment; it does not say which were built. The advisory also listed expanded interpretive uses for the historic structures in the Maclay House complex and a move of the Lake Overstreet Trailhead closer to the site of the old Gillam House (DEP media advisory). The public meeting on those proposals was scheduled for 7 p.m. on August 19, 2013, at the Chiles High School cafeteria, 7200 Lawton Chiles Lane (DEP).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the DEP July 2026 park jurisdiction report, the 2014 Maclay Gardens management plan and its planning page, and the National Park Service register record and nomination for Killearn Plantation.