Asticou Terraces, a series of steps, terraces, shelters, and overlooks, was designed between 1880 and 1928 by Joseph Henry Curtis, Boston landscape architect and civil engineer, as a route to his rustic summer home, Thuya Lodge. The hillside gardens are planted with juniper, pine, and spruce, along with the abundant Thuya occidentalis (arborvitae, also called Eastern white cedar.)

Following Curtis’s death in 1928, his long-time friend Charles K. Savage, owner of the Asticou Inn, created Thuya Garden on the site of Curtis’s orchard. The semi-formal herbaceous garden was designed in the style of Gertrude Jekyll, as interpreted for coastal Maine by Beatrix Farrand. Significant plants from Reef Point, Farrand’s home in Bar Harbor which was dismantled in 1956, were incorporated into this garden. The carved cedar and mahogany entrance gates by Savage and Augustus Phillips depict indigenous Maine flora and fauna. The lead cistern adjacent to the Lower Pavilion and many of the Soderhotz vessels were part of Farrand’s Reef Point collection. From the garden, a woodland trail leads on to Asticou Azalea Garden, Jordan Pond, and Sargent Mountain.

The 140-acre preserve that includes Asticou Terraces and Landing, as well as Thuya Garden, is maintained by the Mount Desert Land & Garden Preserve.