In 1966 the entire estate was bought by the State of New Jersey to form a State Botanical Garden whose settings include a Lilac Garden, Magnolia Walk, the Wild Flower Garden, the Crab Apple Vista, an allée of 166 trees extending almost a half-mile, and the Perennial Garden.
Skylands Manor, a forty-four-room English Jacobean mansion, was designed in the 1920s by John Russell Pope for Clarence McKensie Lewis, a wealthy stockbroker and civil engineer.