Wedding DJ at reynolda gardens in Winston Salem, NC

The Space

Reynolda Gardens began as part of the original 1917 footprint of the 1,067-acre Reynolda estate, developed between 1912 and 1919 by R.J. Reynolds and his wife Katharine, alongside a 16-acre man-made lake, a golf course, formal gardens, greenhouses and woods. Katharine wanted the gardens themselves to feel like an extension of the greenhouses, open to the public from Reynolda Road while the family kept its own privacy elsewhere on the estate, and that public-facing design is still how the gardens read today.

Landscape architect Thomas W. Sears designed the four-acre formal gardens starting in 1915, building on an original landscape plan that engineers Louis Miller and Horatio Buckenham laid out between 1911 and 1913. The 1913 Lord & Burnham greenhouse was restored and reopened as the Brown Family Conservatory on October 8, 2024, giving the gardens a freshly renovated glass structure alongside the older formal beds and walking paths.

Capacity & Layout

Reynolda Gardens does not publish a fixed seated capacity the way an indoor banquet hall does, since it functions as a public garden and grounds rather than a dedicated wedding venue with a set floor plan. Couples using Reynolda Gardens are typically working with an outdoor ceremony or photo setting within the four-acre formal gardens or along the trails and lake, so guest count and layout come down to which specific area of the grounds is arranged for the day.

The formal gardens are organized into distinct garden rooms, described as Pink and White, East Rose, West Rose, and Blue and Yellow gardens, plus Japanese tea houses, pergolas and fountains, giving planners several distinct backdrops within a short walk of each other. More than two miles of trails, including the 1.7-mile Perimeter Trail, and the 16-acre Lake Katharine with its waterfall and historic stone bridge extend the usable grounds well past the formal garden beds themselves.

Amenities

The Boathouse, designed by architect Charles Barton Keen and built before January 1913, now serves as the Boathouse Education Center on the grounds, one more historic structure available as a backdrop or gathering point beyond the gardens themselves. Parking is free near the gardens’ main entrance, and paved pathways along with designated handicapped parking make the grounds workable for guests with mobility needs rather than only for those able to walk long garden paths.

The gardens are free and open to the public year-round, with the grounds open daily from sunrise to sunset and the Conservatory and Welcome Center open Tuesday through Saturday from 9:30am to 4:30pm and Sunday from 1:30pm to 4:30pm. Leashed dogs are welcome across most of the grounds, though not inside the Formal Gardens themselves, worth knowing if any part of the wedding party plans to bring a pet along for photos.

Location & Getting There

Reynolda Gardens sits within the larger Reynolda Historic District in Winston-Salem, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980, and the surrounding 134 acres of gardens and grounds put the ceremony site inside a much larger historic estate rather than an isolated garden plot. We have worked here before, so we know the grounds well enough to plan sound coverage across an outdoor, spread-out property rather than guessing at the layout.

Because Reynolda Gardens is entirely outdoor, spread across formal garden rooms, trails, and grounds around a 16-acre lake, a DJ setup here means portable, weather-ready sound built for open air, with speaker placement chosen to reach guests seated among garden rooms or along the lake rather than one enclosed room where sound naturally stays contained.