There is no charge to wander and enjoy the grounds. A private tour and a tour of the house is $7, $6 for seniors. There is a pleasant picnic pavilion next to the parking lot.
According to Wikipedia, the Hoosier author was born Geneva Grace Stratton on a family farm near Wabash, Indiana. Her family shortened her name to Geneve and she shortened it further to Gene. She was the youngest of 12 children. She married Charles Porter, a druggist, in 1886 in Geneva. To be close to his businesses in Decatur and Fort Wayne, the couple built a house in Geneva near the Limberlost, wetlands that Gene loved. She was an excellent nature photographer. She especially studied birds (owls a favorite) and insects (moths a favorite).
After becoming wealthy from her novels (she wrote 12 total), she decided to build a house of her own design on Sylvan Lake in Rome City. Her beloved Limberlost was being drained for agricultural use. The "cabin" was completed in 1914.
Imagine sitting on the porch enjoying the natural beauty.
Gene dictated her writings to a typist. The typewriter is still in her cabin. In her plant room, she would open wide the windows and put bird food on the wide sills. She didn't mind at all if the birds chose to visit her inside as she potted plants.
The property was used as a Boy Scout camp for several years after Gene's death, but the state purchased it during the Depression. Some of her original furnishings are in the home. The chair above with its rope is an example.
Perhaps because of her exposure to Wabash with its early electricity, she installed electric lights in her cabin. She also had a coal-based central heating system and designed an outside feature to have ice blocks collected and stored in the ice house put in her kitchen icebox without entering the house. She had a darkroom built in this house to accommodate her photo avocation.
The 120 acres also had natural woodlands which in the spring were full of wildflowers. We saw lots of trillium both in the garden and along the trails in the woods. A few other small flowers, too.
The formal garden is designed to have blooms spring through fall.
A reconstruction of her carriage house is a nature interpretive center and gift shop. If you are wanting to purchase her books, both novels and nature studies, the shop has a good selection.
My husband who is a woodworker and likes to find new specimens for his "goblet collection", bought a book about Indiana trees.
Gene was advised to move to California for a climate better for her health. In 1919 she and her daughter Jeannette did relocate to California for most of the year, but she returned to the Cabin at Wildflower Woods for some of the summer. She was busy building a workshop on Catalina Island and a house in Bel-Air, a new Los Angeles area development. Because her books were being made into movies, proximity to Hollywood was beneficial. However, she didn't like the productions so started her own film company.
In 1924 her chauffeured convertible car was struck by a streetcar in Hollywood. She was ejected from the car and suffered a mortal head injury. She was buried in a cemetery in Hollywood though her desire had always been to be buried by the chinquapin oak on her Rome City property. Eventually her grandsons moved her body and that of Jeannette to her preferred site.
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