Please take the time to walk through the botanical gardens on the premise. The castle itself stands on 100 acres of meticulously maintained botanical gardens within this lush woodland preserve.
The New Jersey State Botanical Garden, once the Skylands estate, began in the late 1800s when lawyer Francis Lynde Stetson built a granite mansion, farm, and gardens designed by landscape architect Samuel Parsons Jr. After Stetson’s death, banker Clarence McKenzie Lewis bought the property in 1922, replaced the house with today’s Tudor-style mansion, and hired Vitale and Geiffert to create formal gardens rich in symmetry, color, and fragrance. Lewis collected plants worldwide, creating one of New Jersey’s finest collections, tended by over 60 gardeners. The state purchased the 1,117-acre estate in 1966 under the Green Acres program, and in 1984 the central 96 acres became the official New Jersey State Botanical Garden, now on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.