Mynelle Gardens began as a private garden created by Mynelle Westbrook Hayward and was acquired by the City of Jackson in 1973. It is a seven acre collage of several distinct botanical gardens, with winding pathways, cascading pools, and distinctive bridges which lead you across the pond to an island oasis. It typifies the southern garden with features worth emulating in our own backyards.
The Westbrook and Greenbrook houses and Gardens are frequently used for weddings and wedding receptions, as well as for a variety of meetings. Photographers and artists are encouraged to visit. Mynelle Gardens is a wildlife sanctuary and a haven for songbirds. The Mynelle Gardens' Gift Shop offers Mississippi crafts, gifts, and items related to gardening. In years past, it was the scene of garden parties, civic fund raisers, therapy for World War II recovering soldiers, and has been visited by garden enthusiasts from throughout the world.
Mynelle Gardens is open every day of the year except Christmas, New Year's Day, Martin Luther King's Birthday, the 4th of July, Thanksgiving Day, and the Friday after Thanksgiving. The gardens are now maintained by the city with the help of many devoted community volunteers who constantly seek to add to the beauty of the spaces and to make Mynelle Gardens an integral part of the life of the community.
There are two houses on the property, the Westbrook House, built by Mrs. Hayward's father as a home for him and his wife in 1917, and the Greenbrook House, built for Mynelle by her husband, Mr. Joseph Clarence Green in 1920.
Mynelle Gardens is available for special group and convention tours, private meetings, social gatherings, club meetings, classes, weddings, and receptions. For information of fees and reservations call (601) 960-1894.
Mynelle Gardens is accessible to the handicapped.
