Yew Dell gardens is just northeast of Louisville, about an hour and a half away from Lexington. Every August they have a small hummingbird festival with some speakers and other activities. We hadn’t been to Yew Dell before, so we thought it would be the perfect time to go since we love hummingbirds!
Yew Dell was once a private residence. There used to be a garden that had a lot of taxus shrubs, so hence why it’s called Yew Dell! The castle on the site was once the ‘rec and pool’ house that used to have a pool in the front of it. The main house is now the offices for the gardens.
At the hummingbird festival we watched a man tag some hummingbirds that will allow them to be tracked if they are caught elsewhere. This is helping scientists lean about hummingbird migration, which is an amazing story!
We also learned about hummingbirds from a photographer where we learned about how they eat nectar and insects.
Although we enjoyed learning about hummingbirds from the speakers, there wasn’t as much to do at Yew Dell or the festival as we thought there would be. There was a small grown up hiking area where we saw some pink phlox and mist flower.
We saw one hummingbird at the gardens out and about on its own drinking nectar from an annual sage plant. We were the only ones who noticed!
They had a greenhouse where they raised some of the plants used in the gardens. The back of it had a green roof.
On the patio off the education center there were some neat succulent planters.
In the arboretum part of the Yew Dell we saw a Big Leaf Magnolia in an open sunny area. If you’ve seen these in the Red River Gorge, you know they have a quite different habit growing in the woods!
If you decide to go to Yew Dell or their hummingbird festival there isn’t food available on the site, so make sure to pack a lunch or eat somewhere cool before or after in Louisville!
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