The Alfred B. Maclay State Gardens is a 1176acre Florida State Park, botanical garden and historic site, located in Tallahassee, in northwestern Florida. The address is 3540 Thomasville Road.The gardens are also a U.S. historic district known as the Killearn Plantation Archeological and Historic District. It received that designation on August 16, 2002. According to the National Register of Historic Places, it contains 18 historic buildings, 4 structures and 4 objects.HistoryThe gardens began in 1923 when Alfred Barmore Maclay and his wife, Louise Fleischman, bought the site. Maclay named his gardens Killearn, after the birthplace of his great-grandfather in Scotland, and developed them continuously until his death. His wife continued their development, opened them to the public in 1946, and in 1953 donated some 307acre of their estate, including the gardens, to the Florida Board of Park Service. In 1965 the gardens were renamed in Maclay's honor, to avoid confusion with the new adjacent development called Killearn Estates.
