Asticou Azalea Gardens, Northeast Harbor Maine

The Asticou Azalea Garden is located in Northeast Harbor, Maine, part of the stunning Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve.  It provides visitors with a stunning backdrop of trees and flowering plants that reflect its designer’s love of Japanese gardens and local plant life.  Though only open part of the year, it is a peaceful and tranquil place where local wildlife add to the ambience that make this garden a must see local on the Maine coastline.

Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve’s Asticou Azalea Garden is open daily to visitors, not just incorporating the beauty of azaleas, but so much more.  It is just one part of the incredible beauty that makes the preserve a scenic visitor hotspot for many Maine visitors and locals.

The garden comes to life on opening day, the 1^st of May, with spring flowers and cherry trees.  As the summer commences, guests are heralded with a mass of colours and smells – rhododendrons, azaleas, smoke bushes, irises and water lilies are amongst its collection.  Then, as the autumn months approach and the doors to the public finally close at the end of October, the glowing Maine colors drift into golden reds, yellows and oranges as the leaves begin to change.

The Asticou Azalea Garden was the brainchild of Charles Savage (1956).  The contribution of varied other local plants were incorporated from the dismantled estate belonging to a nearby supporter from Bar Harbor and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s, funding allowed Savage to realize his dream for this garden and the nearby Thuya Garden.

Many features of the garden reflect those in Japan, combined with local Maine coastal vegetation.  Guests can wander along pathways leading to varied garden style rooms and enjoy the many vistas that they provide.  The garden inspires with illusions of far off horizons, mountains, lakes and space.  A garden of sand, along the eastern stream, creates a flowing watery environment, contrasting the trickling water nearby.  In fact, many of the gardens contrast each other, creating uniqueness and something new for garden, scenery and wildlife lovers alike.

About eight-six types of local birds call the garden their home, especially during the spring months.  Guests can see at least some of them during their visits, such as loons, cormorants, bitterns, herons, vultures, ducks, mallards, mergansers, ospreys, eagles, hawks, merlins, killdeers, yellowlegs, sandpipers, gulls, doves, nighthawks, swifts, hummingbirds, kingfishers, woodpeckers, sapsuckers, flickers, wood-pewees, flycatchers, kingbirds, vireos, jays, crows, ravens, swallows, chickadees, nuthatches, wrens, creepers, kinglets, gnatcatchers, thrushes, robins, catbirds, waxwings, warblers, parulas, redstarts, ovenbirds, waterthrushes, yellowthroats, tanagers, juncos, cardinals, grosbeaks, blackbirds, grackles, orioles, finches and siskins.

The Asticou Azalea Garden can be reached via Route 3 South, which runs through Mount Desert Island, and is found on just passed the main town of Northeast Harbor.  A turn off is found passed a gate house and stone wall.  Plenty of parking is available for cars, but the Island Explorer, a local bus, also makes daily runs into the preserve, making drop offs at the gardens. Admission is completely free and the gardens are open during the daylight hours only.