The bed-and-breakfast lifestyle at White Garden Inn

Just eight minutes outside Uptown Oxford, there is a pale green house with a purple front door called the White Garden Inn.  

The nomenclature isn't a nod to the colored exterior, but instead refers to the garden surrounding the gazebo in the backyard, which the previous owner designed to include only white blooms, and the current owners kept it. 

Katie and Michael McNeil bought the White Garden Inn in 2015, intending for their daughter and son-in-law, Laura and Quinn Desmond, to move in and manage the business.

Laura has a degree in hotel and restaurant management from the University of Denver and met Quinn when they were both working at a four star resort in Jackson, Wyoming, in 2008. Nowadays, Laura works full-time at Miami University’s Center for Career Exploration while Quinn works two nights a week at Bello Woodfired Pizza and handles the day-to-day operations of the inn.

“I’ve learned the new term of ‘5 to 9 jobs,’” Laura explained. “So you have a 9 to 5 job and then you (also) have a 5 to 9, and that’s my parenting, taking to sports and innkeeping, cleanup … It’s a lot to juggle.”

Katie cares for the gardens and manages the books and Michael helps out where he can, but Laura gives most of the credit to Quinn for all the daily chores. Dishes and laundry are a lot in any household, even more so when there are six bedrooms to flip. 

The White Garden Inn was built in 1998 as a bed-and-breakfast with both an old style farmhouse feel and some Victorian architectural elements. There are six rooms on the second floor all with ensuite bathrooms, plus what they call the “family suite” – two rooms that share a bathroom – on the third floor. Each room has an armoire, adding to the inn’s historical feel, and other decorations from antique markets to match the theme. 

“It’s a much more homey feeling,” Laura said. “You know, you stay in a big box hotel, it’s a very standardized room. Whereas here, we have living spaces. We have a nice dining room, we have a beautiful wraparound porch that you can sit and enjoy and get away from the college a bit.”

The property itself is five acres, and the McNeils live on an additional five acres behind the inn – “over the river, through the woods,” Laura joked. 

The gardens are her mom’s “labor of love.” Katie has renovated the original plots and added more, including vegetable and herb gardens. There are also three small ponds, a meditation labyrinth, a treehouse platform and a trail through the woods. 

“It’s a beautiful property and it’s nice to have them (Laura’s parents) close by to help with children, or my mom makes banana bread (or) muffins for breakfast in the mornings,” Laura said.

White Garden Inn guests are primarily parents of Miami students. 

“The parents, I think, enjoy the hospitality of it,” Laura said. “We strike up conversations; we can talk to them about a lot of things and make them feel more comfortable.”

Laura’s full-time position as Associate Director of Global Experiential Education, along with her previous experience in the study abroad and international student offices, means she understands and can talk to parents about how the university operates. 

From summer orientation and move-in to family weekend and Greek life functions, they encourage guests to book ahead for whichever event is next. 

“It’s a nice cycle that we actually get to know the guests that come through,” Laura said.

December and May graduations are the inn’s busiest times – sometimes one family books the whole bed and breakfast, but Laura and Quinn have a system to avoid that happening in May. They work on a lottery where those who have stayed all four years get their name at the top of the list for graduation time. 

“We try to allow for three or four families to stay for graduation because we’ve (gotten) to know them over the years,” Laura said.

A few years ago, three families who all had a player on the Miami girls volleyball team stayed at the inn for every home game, and when the time came, the girls hosted their graduation party there too. 

Some guests are season ticket holders who spend the weekend in Oxford attending basketball or hockey games. There’s a “New Year’s group” consisting of seven couples from Cincinnati that has made a tradition of spending the holiday at the White Garden Inn – one year they held a murder mystery dinner party, another they spent the occasion playing casino games. And another group Laura and Quinn fondly call the “Galantines” visit every year for Valentine’s weekend, bringing cozy activities like puzzles and quilting. 

Despite the difference in location, Laura compares running the bed and breakfast in Oxford to the seasonality of a resort – instead of skiing and National Park tourism determining high season, it’s Miami’s semesters in the spring and fall. 

It can be feast or famine, but Laura and Quinn try to fill the gaps with community events, celebrations of life, retirement or anniversary parties, baby or bridal showers and even the occasional wedding. 

Running the inn is more of a lifestyle, but it’s one that Laura and Quinn are familiar with from their time at the Jackson Hole resort where they met.  

Laura worked at the front desk and Quinn was in room service, and since servers had to double-check room numbers with the front desk before deliveries, the two got to talking. Quinn always had chocolate-covered strawberries and champagne, or milk and cookies for the kids. Laura asked if he had any extra, and Quinn started bringing her a strawberry or two. 

“And then (at) every other restaurant, he found another dessert to bring me – the crème brûlée or the tiramisu,” Laura said.

In 2009, they moved to Washington to work in a small Bavarian-themed village. Since Quinn is originally from Washington, Laura didn’t think he’d want to move to Ohio, but in 2011 they decided to move back to Middletown, where Laura grew up.

While Quinn had never imagined living in Ohio, the price of real estate was much more reasonable than the resort towns they’d lived in together.

“We certainly miss the … mountains and snow, but we moved on to other things – we play golf almost year-round,” Quinn said, which he and Laura also played together when they first started dating. 

Quinn was also initially worried managing such a large house would be too much, but some of his favorite memories are from raising his two children at the inn – vacuuming thousands of square feet with a baby strapped to his chest, finding them playing in a bathtub he’d just cleaned (and having to clean it again) and endless games of hide-and-seek.  

The children can be shy sometimes with all the people coming in and out, and Quinn thinks the novelty of growing up in the inn might be wearing off, but lately their daughter, Iris, has been wanting to help more with serving and clearing plates or talking with the guests.  

The Desmonds have always lived on-site – the third floor used to serve as the living quarters, but they added a private apartment off the main house after their first year at the White Garden Inn. Iris was just 9 months old when they moved and now she’s 11.  

“She knows nothing else than this house,” said Laura. “It’s a family business for sure.”