Wing Haven Gardens & Bird Sanctuary

Even before they wed in 1927, Edwin and Elizabeth decided to move to Charlotte and build a home. In the fall of 1926, Edwin bought a 75-by-225-foot lot in what was then the Poplar Gables neighborhood, and Elizabeth began designing the home she envisioned. It would be a simple Colonial Revival style two-story frame house with large windowed rooms to facilitate natural light while highlighting the surrounding outdoor environment. She also planned a multi-acre formal garden to surround the home. As one of the first residents of this part of Charlotte, Edwin Clarkson was able to purchase or barter for nine adjacent undeveloped lots during their first years of residency on Ridgewood Avenue.

Stricken in the early years of her marriage with undulant fever, Elizabeth – a longtime bird aficionado – began to study ornithology. Her condition often left her bedridden, but Elizabeth was able to enjoy her garden and interact with the birds thanks to the numerous windows that distinguish the house. The Clarksons hosted the founding meeting of the Mecklenburg Audubon Club at their home in 1940, and even rescued and fostered a family of baby bluebirds in their Ridgewood Avenue home. Elizabeth’s studies prompted her to write Birds of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (1944, with several subsequent reprints), as well as numerous local and national articles on birds. As a team over the course of their sixty years of marriage, the Clarksons converted their home and property into an urban bird sanctuary and formal garden.

Public tours of the property began in the 1950s. A favorite destination for countless school tours, Wing Haven has been part of the Mint Museum House and Garden Tour nearly every year since the tour’s inception in 1952. A noted public figure in Charlotte, Elizabeth shared her twin passions of ornithology and gardening for many decades with school children and amateur gardeners, even designing other gardens and houses in the Charlotte area, including the garden at St. Peter’s Church. Her expertise and civic mindedness resulted in many state and local awards including an Honorary Doctorate from Queens College. Meanwhile, Edwin remained the behind-the-scenes support and financial benefactor for all of Elizabeth’s efforts regarding the house, gardens, and birds. With the 1971 formation of the Wing Haven Foundation to preserve the Clarksons’ garden, Wing Haven Gardens and Bird Sanctuary has been officially open to the public since 1975. The house was donated to the Foundation after the Clarksons’ deaths in the early 1990s. Despite its urban setting, over 150 different species of birds had been identified at Wing Haven in 1985.