This article has been updated since it first appeared online.
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This stone cottage in Richmond, designed by New York architect Ernest Flagg in 1921, is featured on the April 18 tour. (Photo courtesy Garden Club of Virginia)
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The Fredericksburg tour includes a look at an 1845 West Virginia miner’s cabin on the grounds of historic Berry Plain. (Photo by Kathy Wirtala courtesy Garden Club of Virginia)
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This outdoor oasis will be on view on the Three Chopt tour on Thursday, April 20. (Photo courtesy Garden Club of Virginia)
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More than a century old, this Queen Anne-style row house will be open during the West Avenue tour, Wednesday, April 19. (Photo courtesy Garden Club of Virginia)
Just as nature bursts into spring bloom, Virginia’s 48 garden clubs will invite some 26,000 visitors to tour private landscapes, public gardens and historic sites across the commonwealth. For eight days in April, a collection of 100 properties from the Shenandoah Valley to the Tidewater region will be open in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the nation’s only statewide home and garden tour: Historic Garden Week.
“Proceeds from Historic Garden Week have funded the restoration of historic public gardens and landscapes across the Old Dominion for 90 years,” says Andrea Butler, executive director of the Garden Club of Virginia, which hosts the tour. Richmond is home to the largest concentration of these preserved properties, including Maymont, Grace Arents Garden at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, the Mews at St. John’s Church, Wilton House and The Poe Museum. All of them will be open to Historic Garden Week ticket holders this year.
The Central Virginia tour begins on April 15 with a mix of historic and modern dwellings on scenic Cross Corner Road in Ashland. Two 21st-century homes whose contemporary living spaces were designed to honor the architectural history of Hanover County will contrast with a 60-acre working farm dating to 1732 and a newly restored manor house with its 100 acres of surrounding gardens.
In Petersburg on April 18, a docent will lead a discussion about the petit verdot grapes raised in the vineyards of Aberdeen, a circa 1790-1810 planter’s home. Visitors will see the Louis Comfort Tiffany stained glass windows that illuminate the sanctuary at Martin’s Brandon Episcopal Church and perhaps recognize Centre Hill Mansion as a filming locale from movies and TV series.
On April 18, the collection of classic homes and contemporary residences in Richmond’s Westhampton neighborhood features a storybook stone cottage at 6300 Ridgeway Road designed in the 1920s by renowned New York City architect Ernest Flagg. At the University of Richmond’s Jepson Alumni Center, artists will be plein-air painting throughout the day.
Six homes on West Avenue in Richmond’s Fan District are the focus of the April 19 tour. The neighborhood’s restored homes, with their pocket gardens, cast-iron latticework, antique furnishings and contemporary art collections, include one known as the “crooked house.” Originally built near The Jefferson Hotel, it was moved to 1115 West Ave. in the early 1900s and stands there today, 5 inches out of square.
Once a trail walked by the tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy and Monacan nations, Three Chopt Road evolved into a major east-west route across Virginia. Today, it is the site of the elegant homes and stately mansions featured on the April 20 tour.
The Richmond leg of the tour concludes on April 21 at two Garden Club of Virginia restoration sites. The Kent-Valentine House, built in 1845, is one of the most architecturally significant antebellum mansions in downtown Richmond; and Virginia’s circa-1813 Executive Mansion is the oldest governor’s mansion in the United States built for that purpose.
Outside the Richmond area, sites of note include Bunny Mellon’s Little Oak Springs in Upperville, John Kluge’s Morven near Charlottesville, and the Chinn House in Warsaw, a Federal-style antebellum dwelling listed as a National Historic Landmark that is slated for renovation. At Cedell Brooks Jr. Park in Prince George, a native plant demonstration garden offers pollinator, meadow, rain, hillside and street garden exhibits, all designed to provide practical solutions to problematic landscapes. All of the tour properties feature flower arrangements, over 1,000 in total, created by Garden Club of Virginia members from plants grown primarily in their home gardens.
Butler acknowledges that Historic Garden Week is “a generous gift from the owners who open their homes to thousands of guests.” For the public, it is “an opportunity to discover new neighborhoods and see homes and garden they’ve always been curious about.”
Historic Garden Week Tours
April 15: Ashland-Hanover County
April 15-17: Historic Berkeley, Shirley and Westover plantations
April 18: Richmond: Westhampton; Petersburg-Prince George; Fredericksburg-King George
April 19: Richmond: West Avenue; Northern Neck
April 20: Richmond: Westhampton and Three Chopt
April 21: Richmond: Executive Mansion and the Kent-Valentine House
For tickets and tour information: vagardenweek.org
Jessica Noll of CBS’s “Virginia This Morning” visited the Ernest Flagg stone cottage featured on the Westhampton Garden Day Tour; take a look.
