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The Tower House garden — featured on the River Hill tour — offers dramatic views of the James River and city skyline.
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This garden — also on the River Hill tour — was designed to capitalize on the grade and slope of the lot.
Historic Garden Week is a celebration of spring. For one week in April, the Garden Club of Virginia opens the doors of private gardens, historic homes and contemporary residences across the commonwealth, inviting guests to be inspired by nature’s reawakening.
This year, the 91st Historic Garden Week tour features 16 homes in Richmond’s Windsor Farms and River Hill neighborhoods from April 23 to 25. “Gardens on the tour range from formal 18th-century terraces to landscaped backyards with outdoor kitchens. There will be boxwood mazes, courtyards and cutting gardens,” notes event chair Fran Carden, “each one in full bloom.”
At tour time, Kit Sullivan’s property at 4600 Coventry Road will be resplendent with mature pink and white azaleas planted by a previous owner. “Pink is one of my favorite colors,” she says, “so I designed my garden around them.” Sullivan created a collection of garden “rooms” to bring structure to the space, where she introduced the cool blues and purples of grape hyacinth, iris, bluebells and allium, highlighted by tulips, Solomon’s seal, Lenten rose, peonies, quince and lily of the valley.
Wendell Welder thinks of her garden at 2009 Westover Hills Blvd. as a lab. “I’m a landscape designer, so I am always trying out new combinations to recommend to my clients,” she explains. She uses green — from emerald to chartreuse — as her organizing element and highlights with white. “They both go with anything as I switch up accent colors in different areas.” In April, more than 1,000 bulbs will flower in Welder’s garden beneath an understory of spring-blooming dogwood and cherry.
Homeowner Barbie Such uses color to create a sense of spaciousness in the gardens around her Arts and Crafts-style home at 2005 Westover Hills Blvd. “I like to plant color in groupings,” she points out — combining plants of different sizes and shapes that share a common color. “For instance, I have limited my use of bulbs to yellow daffodils.” She’s done the same with peonies, lavender, daisies and blue sage, giving the garden an orderly, uncluttered feel.
Waves of purple allium and orange echinacea bloom around the terrace at 301 Lock Lane South, interrupted by a scattering of double daffodils and white azalea. “I just love the mix of purple and orange together,” Lindsay Arrington says about the contrast she has created. In the yard, she has repeated some of the same colors, adding azaleas, blue hydrangea, and pink and white astilbe, highlighted by pops of citronelle heuchera, Lenten rose, blue catmint and snowball viburnum.
Over 2,000 floral arrangements created by teams of talented Garden Club of Virginia members will decorate the interiors of the homes on tour. Lenten rose and lush poet’s laurel, azaleas, late-blooming daffodils, tulips and peonies — all native materials grown in member’s own gardens — will interpret the homeowner’s sense of style and color. “We like to use whatever is at the peak of its bloom,” says Cathy Lee, chair of the club’s Artistic Design Committee, “to complement the house and showcase springtime in Virginia.”
Historic Garden Week Tours in Central Virginia
Saturday, April 20 Ashland
Sunday & Monday, April 21 and 22 Historic Berkeley, Shirley and Westover
Tuesday, April 23 Petersburg
Tuesday, April 23 Richmond: Windsor Farms — Nottingham
Wednesday, April 24 Richmond: River Hill
Thursday, April 25 Richmond: Windsor Farms and Coventry
For tickets and tour information: vagardenweek.org
