Afton Villa Gardens — Attraction in Louisiana

BEWARE OF THE GARDENER!!! Only giving 1 star because I can’t give 0! My husband and I were using my tripod to take pictures of us for our 1 year anniversary. During this time we were approached by the gardener who asked us if we paid our fee. We told him yes, we paid the man at the entrance of the garden. As we proceed to figure out where to stand for our next picture the gardener continues to stand there and watch us but gets closer. At this point it was weird and uncomfortable; and he asked us how much we paid. We told him we paid the $5 a piece like it states online. He took another step closer and said that we needed to pay $100 because we were taking pictures. I told him that neither of us were photographers and we were literally taking pictures of ourselves on our own camera. He said it didn’t matter because we were dressed nice. I asked him if every other person in the gardens that were taking pictures as well paid that fee and he didn’t respond. I asked him if it mattered if the pictures were taken with my phone or my camera and he said no. If we wanted to take any type of pictures with any type of camera we needed to pay HIM the $100. I of course told him to forget it and it wasn’t happening. Other guests were watching and listening at this point and were in shock with what the gardener was trying to pull. We left where he was and went to another part of the gardens to take a couple more pictures being that we still payed...

My fiancee and I were were going to take photos in the garden and even considering the location for our wedding reception this past Saturday. We payed a $10 entrance fee and before even getting to the parking lot, we got a call from the two other people we were planning to attend the gardens with, informing us that they did not have cash to pay the entrance fee, we made a U-turn to pay their entrance fee for them in cash. At this time the gardener at the front entrance informed us of a $125 dollar fee for taking photos, which we were not aware of, we declined this fee and immediately left the gardens. Because of this, we requested our $10 entrance fee back as we had not even gotten out of our car, at which point the gardener named "Poo Doo" at the front gate told us that "we entered the garden" and refused to refund our entrance fee despite being "in the garden" for less than one minute. I told him that it was obvious that we had not gotten to use the facility as we immediately had to turn around, and he insisted that we were not entitled to a refund.

This lack of common sense and hospitality will certainly prevent me from coming back.

If you read through the reviews this has clearly been going on for years and no one...

BEWARE. I am beginning to wonder if the actual property owners have died and this place is in some sort of "legal limbo"... there is NO way to contact them, theyve got a mouthy, rogue, and lying groundskeeper who apparently has quite the racket going on to scam visitors into paying exorbitant amounts of cash for even taking a snapchat selfie while there, the hours and opening days are so unclear it makes pre-planning a trip impossible, and the general tone has become so off-putting that i cannot say I will be back. I grew up visiting Afton Villa, bringing picnic lunches and enjoying the beauty of the place for hours on end, however with the property being so dubiously managed and not being able to even get in touch with ANYONE leads me to strongly believe that as mentioned in the beginning of the review; the property has fallen into some sort of weird limbo with the gardener running the show. Their Facebook is useless, their google reviews increasingly bad, and the gatekeeper/"manager" or whatever he calls himself incredibly snappy and rude, what on EARTH is going ON at...