Description

Elevation: 1841 ft.

Happy Hollow Garden houses an enormous array of over 800 azaleas amidst 34 acres of manicured gardens and surrounding woodlands. This area is home to variety of wildlife in a peaceful, serene, and easily accessible setting. The gardens offer 5 trails, each blazed and marked, and offering glimpses of different types of habitat. Walk through creekside woodlands, stands of white pine, blazes of azaleas, stands of oak and mixed deciduous forest. Spring migration could be the most fruitful time to bird this park producing birds like Cape May and Tennessee warblers. In summer, look for nesting Louisiana waterthrush, American redstart, and scarlet tanager. Canopied under the surrounding woodlands, moist understories, especially along the creek, provide suitable habitat for other critters as well. Listen for the serenades of spring peeper (in the spring, of course!). Turn over a few rocks and watch northern dusky salamander squirm deep into the mud. Other denizens of these grounds include eastern red, eastern gray, and eastern fox squirrels, and eastern chipmunk. Watch for eastern box turtle slowly moving along the forest floor.

Directions

Continue south on Twelve O’Clock Knob Road for 3.8 miles to Rt. 694. Continue south on Rt. 694 for 0.5 miles to US 221. Turn left onto US 221 East and go 0.5 miles to Rt. 692. Turn left onto Rt. 692/Mt. Chestnut Road; travel for 2.4 miles to Happy Hollow Garden on the left.