The Marian Coffin Garden surrounds the Gibraltar Mansion, a derelict Italian Renaissance house just north of the city centre. The grounds are open to the public year-round and free; the house itself is closed and slowly decaying. The contrast between the polished six-acre formal garden and the boarded-up house is part of the appeal.
The garden was designed in 1925 by Marian Coffin, one of the first American women to make a career as a landscape architect, working in the Beaux-Arts tradition. The terraced layout, with stone walls, fountains, a marble loggia, and themed planting rooms, has been carefully restored over the past two decades. The plantings — azaleas in spring, roses in summer — are at their best in May and June.
It is one of the lesser-known Wilmington gardens but well worth the short walk uphill from downtown.