The Colonial Period
1680 – 1776

During the 1680’s, Thomas and Ann Drayton completed the first residence at Magnolia. Historians who knew considered the home “the first plantation house of consequence in the Carolina colony.” As this mansion was completed, a small garden was laid out to complement the formal regularity of the mansion’s classical design. The first garden at Magnolia was completed around 1680 – making Magnolia-on-the-Ashley this hemisphere’s oldest estate garden. Today, “Flowerdale,” almost unchanged in design, acts as the historic core of the great gardens the Drayton family would create over centuries.  By 1717, when its builder, Thomas Drayton, was laid to rest within the plantation vault, what began as a small formal French garden had grown to encompass over 10 acres.

Thomas and Ann Drayton planted the family roots deep, and their Magnolia Plantation, with its imposing colonial plantation house, ambitious garden, and vital river flowing to the sea was a European dream realized, a grand outpost of civilization standing alone in the Carolina wilderness.  The stage was set.  Magnolia would be the seat from which sprang all American members of the Drayton family.  Over the next century, the Draytons would play crucial roles in shaping the colonial, revolutionary, and post-revolutionary history of a new world.  And like America, the Gardens of Magnolia-on-the-Ashley would also emerge from the focus and hard work of individuals.  As the years passed, the Draytons guided the spirit of the place, transforming it from a raw riverside forest to a cultivated paradise, exploding with color and overflowing with wildlife.  Magnolia is a testament to the best impulses of the European colonists. 

John Drayton was born in that same Magnolia house in 1713. Having failed to inherit his birthplace, he brought an adjoining tract in 1738 and built stately Drayton Hall, which, through luck as much as anything else, is the only ancient Ashley River plantation house still standing today. Both Magnolia Plantation and Drayton Hall would build their fortunes on the great export commodity of that era, which was rice. Rice cultivation in the early to mid-18th century was one of the most profitable export crops of any British colony, and most appropriately they grew a variety of rice known as “Carolina Gold.” The Lowcountry of South Carolina, with its swamps, marshes, and inland fresh-water rivers, was the perfect environment for growing such a crop.  Because its climate and terrain mirrored the West Coast of Africa, slaves were brought from this region by the thousands to clear the lands, build the rice dikes and levees, and use their valuable knowledge of rice cultivation to make fortunes for their European owners, including the Drayton family.

In 1774 after his older brother’s death, John Drayton purchased Magnolia Plantation from his brother’s son and his nephew, William Drayton, after he moved to Florida to assume the prestigious post as Chief Justice of that state. This finally brought both Magnolia Plantation and Drayton Hall under single family ownership for the first and only time. The American Revolution was looming on the horizon, and life in the Lowcountry would soon change radically.