Cason Callaway found a rare plumleaf azalea growing in worn-out Harris County cotton land in 1930 — depleted after nearly a century of cultivation — and decided the place deserved better. What he built from that single discovery opened in 1952: 13,000 acres of restored Georgia hill country, with eroded gullies filled, streams dammed into 13 lakes, and Virginia Callaway working alongside landscape architect Gilmore David Clarke to plant more than 20,000 trees, shrubs, and native flowers. The demonstration vegetable garden he started late in his life was named for him after his death in 1961. A glass-enclosed tropical butterfly conservatory, named for the founder of Days Inn through his widow's support, followed decades later. The gardens Callaway shaped from exhausted farmland now cover 2,500 acres — proof that the most interesting thing a piece of ground can do is become something its soil never promised.
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