The garden was often referred to by Eudora and her mother as a labor of love. This garden was designed by Chestina Welty, Eudora Welty's mother, in 1925. The Education and Visitors Center and Gift Shop are open Tuesday - Friday from 8:30 a.m. Tours of the Eudora Welty House & Garden are given Tuesday - Friday, four times a day at 9 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m.
There, visitors can purchase tickets to tour the Welty House, see a selection of Welty's literary awards, and explore exhibits based on the author's memoir, One Writer's Beginnings. In 2009, the Education and Visitors Center was opened next door at 1109 Pinehurst Street. The renovation of the house and garden is part of a larger effort to celebrate and promote Mississippi's literary heritage as a means of developing tourism to the state. In 2006 the house and garden were opened to the public as an author's house museum. The house was restored by the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. This was part of a raised awareness of the significance of authors and literary life in the United States. The house was first declared a Mississippi Landmark in 2001, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2004.
Welty and her mother built and tended the garden over decades. In it she did all her writing, in an upstairs bedroom. The Eudora Welty House at 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson, Mississippi was the home of author Eudora Welty for nearly 80 years.