An annual rite of spring, Historic Garden Week from the Garden Club of Virginia captivates thousands of visitors with tours of more than 120 beautifully appointed homes and stunning gardens throughout the commonwealth. Take a sneak peek at three of the gardens featured on the Richmond-area tours.
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Photo by Tom Topinka
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A Gardener’s Garden
Susan and Walter Robertson III discovered their home in Chatham Hills — a charming neighborhood designed by renowned landscape architect Charles F. Gillette in 1916 — in 2002. An incredible stand of mature trees, including magnolias, hollies, oaks and poplars, drew them to the neighborhood. “It feels like you’re in the middle of the country, but you’re still very close to everything,” says Susan, a certified Master Gardener and landscape designer. Over the years, she’s planted lush, terraced gardens layered with Japanese maples, boxwoods, hydrangea, hellebores, dahlias and a variety of native plants. She created a new central axis joining the terraced gardens with the main house and outdoor living areas, the 1920s-era guest house (the first house on the property), and the pool deck. Also on the grounds, behind the guest house, is an exotic Cunninghamia, or Chinese fir tree, a remnant of the Gilded Age when the neighborhood was created.
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Photo by Todd Wright
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The Gardens at Historic Tuckahoe
Tuckahoe is one of the most well-preserved plantation properties in the Richmond region. Its first cultivated English-style gardens were created in the early 18th century for the Randolph family; very little is known about them or the gardens that followed. The contemporary gardens at Tuckahoe designed by Sue Thompson, a Master Gardener and landscape designer who has overseen them since the late 1970s, are well-researched interpretations of what those early gardens might have looked like, and they are considered by many to be among the most beautiful gardens in the region.
Though its age is unknown, Thompson says, one of the few remaining historic features of Tuckhoe’s gardens is the Ghost Walk, a boxwood-hedged path said to be haunted by the spirit of a broken-hearted young woman. The grounds of the designated National Historic Landmark (Tuckahoe was Thomas Jefferson’s boyhood home) include a variety of native plants, formal gardens, a cemetery garden designed by Charles F. Gillette in 1949 and a small herb knot garden designed by the late Richmond landscape designer Willam H. Spell for Thompson and her husband, Tad, and their family.
For centuries before English colonization, the area known today as Tuckahoe was home to Native American people from the Monacan nation and may have served as a meeting ground for the Powhatan, Monacan and Nottoway people. The original cultivated gardens and fields at Tuckahoe were created and tended by enslaved African Americans and indentured servants. To honor their memories, the Thompsons have created a museum dedicated to telling those untold stories and are actively seeking information that will help them share the full history of Tuckahoe.
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Photo by Tom Topinka
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Photo by Tom Topinka
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Photo by Tom Topinka
Tranquil Haven
This terraced water garden with its wandering paths, koi ponds and cascading three-level waterfall is the physical embodiment of serenity. The original plan, homeowner John Wheeler says, was to design an English-style garden to showcase the over 700 varieties of hostas from his late wife Julie’s prized collection, transplanted from their previous home in Pittsburgh. Then, Ken Gustafson of Ashland Berry Farm suggested something different and less formal: a garden that envelops you in its cool green spaces. Mossy, meandering pathways weave through the multilevel garden, set on 1 acre in the woods, where hostas of every shape and size; solid and variegated; and in shades of green, blue, ivory and yellow thrive in tandem with cherry, birch, ginkgo and Japanese maple trees, and native perennials. Among the hostas you’ll find Hosta Julie Wheeler, named in honor of Julie, who was active in the American Hosta Society and Hosta College.
Historic Garden Week
April 26-May 3
- Saturday, April 26: Ashland – New Kent
- Sunday and Monday, April 27-28: Historic Berkley, Shirley and Westover plantations
- Tuesday, April 29: Richmond: Lower Tuckahoe West; Petersburg; Further Afield: Williamsburg
- Wednesday, April 30: Richmond: Pope Avenue
- Thursday, May 1: Richmond: Chatham Hills
For tickets and info: vagardenweek.org
