Green Arrow Tour

Presented by The Garden Club of Georgia, Inc. and Thomasville Garden Club, Inc.

Introduction

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Kate Hanna Harvey commissioned Cleveland, Ohio landscape architect, Ethelwyn Harrison, to create a master plan for Pebble Hill.

Miss Harrison was born in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1892 and was a 1916 graduate of the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Landscape Design. Her goal was to create a setting in the English formal style that would be most pleasing in winter and early spring when the Hanna family was in residence and welcoming houseguests regularly. Miss Harrison’s master landscape plan created an overall design that showcased beautiful vistas throughout the property and remains in the Pebble Hill archives today, along with her detailed notes regarding care and maintenance.

In the mid-1930s, Miss Harrison’s career took a different path as she began breeding and showing award-winning English Cocker Spaniels. She devoted most of her time and energy to this pursuit and was very active with the English Cocker Spaniel Club of America, Inc. until her death in 1983.

Pebble Hill was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1990. A site on the Georgia Camellia Trail since 2016, Pebble Hill is also proud to be a member of the American Camellia Society and an official stop on the American Camellia Trail since 2018. Pebble Hill is committed to maintaining and preserving its extensive variety of camellias, many of which were included in Miss Harrison’s landscape plan. The beauty of Pebble Hill is referenced in the following excerpt from Garden History of Georgia 1773-1933: “One’s impression of Pebble Hill is that in developing the vast grounds such close harmony with nature has been preserved that there is an art which doth mend nature, change it rather, but the art itself is nature.”