Gardenview Horticultural Park

Along busy Pearl Road in the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville lies a nondescript stone wall simply marked “Gardenview Horticultural Park.” Look a little closer and beneath the sign, you’ll see a description: “Acres of English Cottage Gardens Open to the Public.”

Enter the gates, and you’ll feel as though you’ve been whisked far away from suburban Ohio and transported to the British countryside. The sprawling English garden that awaits is an entirely unexpected site to stumble upon.

The landscape is quaint and charming; a serene oasis filled with thousands of flowers. Head to the arboretum, and you’ll find more than 2,000 trees, such as 500 different varieties of flowering crabapples.

Gardenview is the life’s work of Henry Ross, who as a young man, had a dream of creating an English garden and purchased this plot of land after returning home from World War II. Ross worked tirelessly for decades, transforming a near-swamp full of weeds and blackberry brambles into the breathtaking manicured garden that it is today.

Though Ross died in 2014, his passion project still survives. His former apprentice Mark LaRosa now cares for the garden and is its only full-time worker.