Rosedown Plantation, Cotton plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana.

Rosedown Plantation is a former cotton plantation whose main house, commissioned in 1835, stands at the end of a 660-foot oak allée. The two-story white house has a two-story gallery with Doric columns and a vase-shaped balustrade, flanked by brick side wings added in 1845. The grounds include 18 acres of formal gardens.

Daniel and Martha Turnbull commissioned the house in 1835, and carpenter Wendell Wright built it of cypress and cedar milled mostly on site, using enslaved labor. In 1845 T.S. Williams added one-story brick wings with Greek-style porticoes to the north and south. Martha Turnbull tended the gardens for 60 years and kept a detailed diary; they were restored in 1956 by landscape architect Ralph Ellis Gunn.

Martha Turnbull oversaw the gardens for 60 years and kept a detailed garden diary; in 1836 she bought camellias, azaleas and other plants from William Prince & Sons in New York. The parterre before the house is a diamond of yaupon holly, and the allée is flanked by Baroque geometric beds and English-style winding paths.

Visitors can explore the house and grounds during daytime hours, with guided tours of rooms available alongside self-guided walks. The gardens are easy to navigate on foot and provide benches in the structures for rest and shade.

The north wing's guest bedroom was built for a rosewood Gothic Revival bed 13 feet tall, ordered for the Lincoln Bedroom had Henry Clay won the 1844 election. Clay lost; Daniel Turnbull, his supporter, bought the bed. It stayed in the room over 150 years until the last private owner sold it to the Dallas Museum of Art for $450,000.