Food Feature: Garden of ...

If the spirit of Tennessee Williams’ Southern spitfire Maggie the Cat hosted “Antiques Roadshow,” she could do it at Eden State Gardens, a graceful 120-year-old country estate in Point Washington, Fla., between Destin and Panama City.

Built in the 1880s by lumber company owner William Wesley, the white-columned, two-story home was renovated in the 1960s by Lois Maxon, a transplanted New Yorker with a family fortune, crates of European antiques and big ideas about the antebellum South. Today, Eden State Gardens is a 12-acre state park, with emerald lawns fanning out past ancient oaks laden with Spanish moss and pink lichen, and camellia gardens humming with pollinating bees. The water of Tucker Bayou laps against remnants of the lumber company’s docks. Pastoral yes, and primordial too, if you heed the sign politely warning you to respect the local alligators.

Eden State Gardens is a popular destination, errant reptiles notwithstanding. Early on a spring Sunday, a dozen cars parked under the trees. A loving couple gazed into the reflecting pool beside the house. (The park is a favorite local site for weddings.) I could have spent my day watching osprey fish in the sawgrass marsh, but I was intrigued by the tale of this solitary house full of fine furniture at the end of a country road.

A volunteer led me and three other visitors through seven rooms furnished with Maxon’s Old World antiques. Massive gilt-rimmed mirrors and Gothic hat trees stood like sentries — oil portraits of family predecessors lined the walls. Delicate 200-year-old chairs with embroidered seats, more Paris than Pensacola, are part of a collection our guide declared the second largest assemblage of Louis XVI furnishings in the U.S. after the Biltmore Estate. A drawing of Maxon, red-haired and refined, watches from the front hall, and original Audubon prints (one of a vivid pink Flamingo, another of forest dwelling birds) hang in an upstairs bedroom. Maxon never married. When she died in 1968, she left the house and everything in it to the state of Florida.

In the decade between the death of the last Wesley and Maxon’s arrival in 1963, the property fell to ruin. Local children called it “the ghost house,” and at least one boy is said to have scaled a 550-year-old tree near the front door to enter the house on a dare. Maxon adapted Eden into her showplace, removing fireplaces, adding bathrooms and parlors. A developer purchased the outbuildings — former homes of Wesley Lumber’s employees — and moved them to Grayton Beach for use as cottages.

The 1972 eco-thriller Frogs was filmed at Eden State Gardens, when the house stood empty again. It’s rumored that the amphibian extras ran free, but there’s no trace of them. Just three candy green salamanders darting across the shady veranda, and sightseers strolling Eden.

Eden State Gardens in Point Washington, Fla., is open daily from 8 a.m. until sundown. On-the-hour guided tours begin at 9 a.m. Thursday-Monday. State Park admission $2 per car. Tour admission $1.50 per person. 850-231-4214. www.dep.state.fl.us/parks/district1/edengardens .