This Smith County Master Gardener project was created to organize and coordinate research, planting, and maintenance of the gardens at the Goodman-LeGrand historical house.

Our purpose is to advise and assist the Goodman staff to facilitate a landscape that reflects the home’s time period, its importance to the City of Tyler, and its landmark status. We seek to create and maintain a garden that is an accurate reflection of the house and its occupants from 1880 to 1930. We also provide educational information and occasionally tours to visitors about this garden, and early 20th Century Southern American gardens as well.

According to the City of Tyler’s Parks and Recreation department, The Goodman home was originally built in 1859 as a one-story, four-room house, and it was established on a nine-acre wooded parcel of land. It was known as Bonnie Castle by its first owner and occupant, Samuel Gallatin Smith. The young well-to-do bachelor and attorney sold the house in 1861 when the Civil War broke out. Mr. Smith became a Captain in the Confederacy and was later killed in battle in Louisiana. In 1866, a year after the Civil War ended, Dr. Samuel Adams Goodman, a retired country doctor from South Carolina, purchased the house. For 73 years and four generations, this prominent family made the house their family home.

For more information on the history of this magnificent home and garden, please check the City of Tyler’s web site.