Scene's from Wilmington NC's colorful Airlie Gardens

Airlie Gardens, begun in 1884, was designed as a lush, flowing, naturalistic Southern garden for a private family, with thousands of azaleas, camellias, magnolias, palms, and wisteria; it was purchased in 1999 by New Hanover County

The Airlie Oak dates back to 1545 and is the largest live oak in the Carolinas; it is 130 feet tall, has a trunk circumference exceeding 22 feet and a crown spread of more than 110 feet

Famous people who've lived in Wilmington include: Woodrow Wilson, Lara Trump, Charlie Daniels, Michael Jordan, Althea Gibson, Charles Kuralt, David Brinkley, Roman Gabriel and Meadowlark Lemon

Located on the grounds of the gardens are the Greek Revival-style Mount Lebanon Chapel and cemetery; the chapel, built in 1835, is the oldest surviving church structure in New Hanover County

How many turtles can you count here?; Wilmington is the eastern terminus of Interstate 40, an east-west freeway that ends 2,554 miles away at Barstow, CA, where it joins I-15, the Gateway to Southern California

Wilmington is the home of EUE/Screen Gems Studios, the largest domestic TV and movie production facility outside CA; Iron Man 3, Super Mario Bros, We're the Millers, Fox's Sleepy Hollow, Dawson's Creek, and NBC's Revolution were produced in Wilmington

Other tourist sights in Wilmington include the USS North Carolina and the almost 2 mile Riverwalk which was ranked as the 'Best American Riverfront' by readers of USA Today in 2014 in addition to popular Wrightsville, Kure and Carolina Beaches nearby

I can't remember visiting Wilmington in at least 40 years; the city has roughly 115,000 residents and was the largest city in NC until 1910 when it was surpassed by Charlotte (it's now the 8th largest)

The Bottle Chapel anchors the Minnie Evans Sculpture Garden; Minnie Evans was the Garden's gatekeeper from 1949 to 1974 and became one of America's most celebrated, self-taught visionary artists, with her works included in the Smithsonian collection

The Gardens have 75,000+ azaleas and host the largest azalea festival in the state each April; I visited the weekend before the festival with most of the azaleas at their peak; admission is $9

I stayed at nearby Carolina Beach where my family vacationed when I was a kid; the boardwalk is still there but it has been gentrified and seems quite boring now as opposed to having a fun arcade and bingo games when I was a kid

In the early 16th century, Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano commissioned by the king of France with a French crew was reportedly the first European to see this area; the first permanent colonial settlement dates to the 1720s

More famous people from Wilmington include: Sonny Jurgensen, Sugar Ray Leonard, Willie Stargell, Wiley Cash, Sammy Davis Sr., Caterina Jarboro and Kristen Dalton (Miss USA 2009)

The 67 acre Gardens are located on Bradley Creek, just inland from Wrightsville Beach; in 2018, more than 300 trees here were toppled by Hurricane Florence

In the Wilmington massacre of 1898, white supremacists launched a coup that overthrew the legitimately elected local government, expelled Black leaders, destroyed their property including the city's only Black newspaper and killed up to 300 Black citizens

In 2014, Republican Governor Pat McCrory decided not to renew film incentives that had attracted major studios, which ended up taking a massive toll on not just Wilmington's but NC's entire film industry; as a result, most of the studios moved to Atlanta