flowers with yellow tubular petals and brown centers along with spiky white flowers in front of a stone wall and pergola

about Stoneleigh

The mission of Stoneleigh is to celebrate the beauty and importance of the natural world and inspire the cultivation of native plants for the benefit of all.

part of Natural Lands

Stoneleigh, the public garden of Natural Lands, is one of the non-profit conservation organization’s most accessible and popular properties. In 2016, the Hass family donated Stoneleigh to Natural Lands for public enjoyment and to nurture and enhance the natural beauty of this community resource. Since its opening, Stoneleigh has magnified the reach of Natural Lands’ mission to save open space, care for nature, and connect people to the outdoors and each other.

In addition to Stoneleigh, Natural Lands cares for a network of 40+ nature preserves across eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. These properties total more than 23,000 acres and include many of the most spectacular and ecologically diverse properties in the region, which are enjoyed by more than 250,000 visitors annually.

Stoneleigh opened its garden gates to the public in May 2018. The garden provides joy and well-being for tens-of-thousands of guests every year through inspiring displays of native plants and regional ecology in a magnificent former Main Line estate.

golden sunlight with dramatic shadows on a winter meadow of dry plants and a small tree silhouetted in foreground

Stoneleigh’s background

In 1877, Edmund Smith, a rising executive with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and his wife, Arabella Barnes Smith, purchased 65 acres of land in Villanova for a “gentleman’s farm.” They called their estate Stoneleigh.

To shape the grounds, the Smiths hired landscape gardener Charles H. Miller, who trained at Kew Gardens in England and later served as chief gardener for Fairmount Park.

At the turn of the 20th century, Samuel Bodine, head of United Gas Improvement Company, and his wife, Eleanor Gray Warden Bodine, acquired the property. In addition to building the Tudor Revival style building that exists today, the Bodines hired New York landscape architecture firm Pentecost and Vitale to radically redesign the gardens in a more formal, or “Beaux Arts,” style.

Evidently, the Bodines was not pleased with the results. In 1908, he retained the Olmsted Brothers of Massachusetts—sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, and the most prestigious landscape architecture firm in the country—to “guide him in the gradual transformation of the place.” Over the next 50 years, the Olmsted Brothers firm returned periodically to Stoneleigh to plan vistas and pathways, establish gardens and terraces, reroute points of entry, select plant species, and transplant trees.

Following Samuel Bodine’s death in 1932, Stoneleigh was subdivided and sold. Otto Haas, entrepreneur and co-founder of Rohm and Haas Company, and his wife, Phoebe Waterman Haas, purchased the southwestern portion of the estate, launching a more than 80-year tenure by the Haas family. Otto and Phoebe’s son, John, and his wife, Chara, acquired the property in 1964 and lived there for the next five decades.

In 1996, John and Chara Haas placed the property under conservation easement with Natural Lands, ensuring this special place—the home where they’d raised their five children—would be preserved.

John passed away in 2011 and Chara the following year. In an extraordinary act of generosity, the Haas family decided to entrust Stoneleigh to Natural Lands. The transfer of ownership took place in April of 2016.

The conservation easement remains in place but was transferred to Lower Merion Conservancy for annual monitoring.

Stoneleigh is now a vibrant public garden that welcomes thousands of people each year.