Historic Garden Week Virginia :: 2009

Photos from the 2008 Albemarle tours around Greenwood.

Top two are from Bellevue and the bottom photo of a grotto was taken at Casa Maria.

This year, I am saving my vacation time for two things: a weeklong get-away to a cabin in the Finger Lakes and . . . a day or two for Historic Garden Week in Virginia.

Looks like Morven, several Free Union estates and UVa are the 2009 tour menu for Albemarle. Hopping over the mountain to Staunton wouldn't suck, either. (Although they seem to just be offering new-er home and garden tours. Post-1980. Why on earth? With all those gorgeous historic city homes?)

For me, the mix of seeing the architecture of the homes and their estate gardens is the one-two punch. It sends me into a garden-induced trance of the best kind. Willa was curled up in her Moby Wrap for last year's tours (photos here and here). She digs her Snuggli these days - a backpack - where she can sit up high and see everything. And point and point and point - whispering her discoveries. I mean, our discoveries.

An End-All Be-All Garden Grows in Greenwood

Please help me brainstorm ideas on how I can secure an invitation to tour this local garden. She has a Blue Garden! Among other acts of horticultural wonderment. My stars.

(Thanks to Jean for the link - and for supporting my habit!)

Field Trip: Swannanoa - Afton, Virginia

We made it up for a quick tour of the Swannanoa grounds this afternoon. Sadly, much of Swannanoa has fallen into disrepair and there's not much actually growing in the gardens. But it still gives off a sense of grandeur with its marble and its terraces and its views. I mean, a classic Italian garden (its structures, at least) tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountains is definitely nothing to sniff at.

Here's a peek at some of our discoveries. (Pssst. Paid tours of the house continue until tomorrow, but if you just want to walk around outside - it is free!)

Local Color : Mirador : More Glimpses

A huge thank you to a LISH reader for putting me on to this link.

Fans of Mirador will find these photos nothing short of absolutely satisfying.

Have at it!

The Slower Hum of Summer

A little time indoors. A little time outdoors. Some time daydreaming. Some time with a nose in a book or an ear to the ground. Lately enjoying . . .




1. The Endless Feast - my end-of-the-day eye candy. This PBS show focuses on local foods. The crew visits different parts of the country and they plan feasts around what is in-season. Mile-long tables are set up in the middle of a farm field and guests eat to their heart's content in the evening sun.

2. Soy yarn in Geranium and green flower buttons for Willa's first fall sweater. I am never going to bother with knitting adult sweaters eva-again. When baby things are so easy to knit up - in a flash! Ha - so satisfying.


3. Baby swing smocks and bloomers from Angry Chicken (a.k.a. Bend the Rules sewing guru Amy Karol). Ditto on the adult clothing racket. Zip-zip-zip. My sewing machine feels like magic!


4. Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden by Emily Whaley - I bought this while on our Charleston honeymoon several years ago and made the pilgrimage to Mrs. Whaley's garden that same week. This sweet book is charming and has some interesting Southern recipes. Perfect mid-afternoon hammock-swinging (or air-conditioning) read. This photo is from gardentraveler.com.

5. During our commute home to Sugar Hollow, Lynne Rossetto Kasper keeps me company via podcast. The Splendid Table takes me to far away places and then, brings me back down to earth, to test things out in my own kitchen. She has a new part of the program on locavores and the Sterns' Road Food bit sends me on a mini-foodie vacation every time. Complete with the craving for something fried and a malted milkshake.


6. Plans for our own gardens continue and I save clippings and images from the garden geniuses of others. The above photo is from The Arbogast Inn in Monterey, Virginia. The owners of the inn tracked the image (and me) down through flickr. To report that a cow crashed through that fence shortly after I snapped the photo!

Wandering Mind and Wander . . . Lust

Thoughts on area garden spots that can serve as fun day trips . . .

Do Tell variety of peony from Peony Meadows. Some peonies are still in bloom at their nursery in Stony Point (nine miles northeast of Charlottesville). As their site mentions, the best time to plant peonies is in the fall. So this trip could start some daydreaming on your end for next spring's peony bounty.

The knot garden from Agecroft Hall in Richmond, VA. These gardens are part of an actual English Tudor estate in which the manor house was dismantled and shipped from England to the present spot - overlooking the James River. The famous Charles Gillette had a hand in Agecroft's landscape - which also includes a sunken garden and a fragrance garden that "blooms with Elizabethan aromatics." Um, I am so there.


Staunton, Virginia. Gorgeous homes, old gardens, wrought iron fences, winding brick pathways. Visit this super-quaint city and walk it. Residents take pride in their plots and maintaining a sense of Staunton's history. Which is a boon for us garden-stalkers. I meander, big time, through this town and take many a mental note . . .

Poe's Enchanted Garden - Then

Poe's Enchanted Garden - Now

The Enchanted Garden at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum. Who knew that dark, morose dude liked a cheery spot to warm the cockles of his Tell-Tale Heart? This spot in Richmond has been on my radar for a while. A courtyard design that is beguiling in its simplicity. These images are from the Richmond Then and Now website.

Secret Gardens of Albemarle Revealed: Part II

Our second house and garden visit was Bellevue. The boxwood parterre (a garden with flower beds and paths in a pattern) was way cool. Children would find it enchanting . . . and would probably run around the corridors of boxwoods to their heart's content. I thought about doing it myself, but imagined that the tone of the tour would frown upon that sort of behavior.

Bellevue has connections to the Langhorne's of Mirador (a brother-in-law of Nancy Astor owned it at one point). And an aforementioned bit of intrigue about the house, "A trap door to an old tunnel, since collapsed, in one of the first-floor rooms led to the stables; there is a mysterious underground room on the east side of the garden." Gasp!

Secret Gardens of Albemarle Revealed

Lucky us. Lucky us. Once a year, homeowners and garden enthusiasts share their worlds with eager visitors in the Charlottesville area during Virginia's Historic Garden Week. Willa, the totally cool little trooper that she is, curled up in her Moby wrap and we visited two this past Sunday. With my camera at the ready, we tiptoed through stands of lilac bushes, boxwood mazes, greenhouses and stone paths that revealed magical points of interest at every turn. This first set of photos is from Casa Maria - part of the Greenwood Homes and Garden tour set.

Books: The Lost Gardens of Heligan

One of the books I have had my nose in as of late is The Lost Gardens of Heligan.

Run, don't walk, to your library, bookstore, whatever and treat yourself to this treasure. Then, curl up with some tea and crumpets.

Here's the general gist of it. A centuries-old, self-sufficient Cornwall (England) estate garden was left to crumble - after most of the garden staff was killed during the first World War. Then, around 1990, several gentleman gardeners decide to resurrect and restore it to its original state - unearthing delight after delight up from under the brambles and the overgrowth. The book describes their discoveries and their devotion to Heligan with the love and curiosity any gardener can appreciate.

I won't tell you what they find. But I will tell you that the book has wonderfully revealing pictures. I thought I would be able to restrain myself and just look at the photos as the story unfolded. Nope. I gobbled them all up and just stared at them, agog, for an hour before actually even starting the book.

If you are lucky enough to get over to merry old England, you can visit the gardens. Here's a look at Heligan's restored Italian garden.

(And, yes! They have before, after and historical photos of this spot in the book. Totally, horticulturally-nerdily satisfying.)

Hidden Gardens, Secret Gardens, Spooky Gardens

Overgrown with ivy. Shaded by trees that continued to reach for the sky. Smelling of old boxwoods and soil. Hints of a more civilized time peek out in the way of stone, marble, fountains, brick walls, gazebos. A hidden garden (heart racing!). This will be an ongoing theme in this blog - as it is an obsession of mine.

So let us begin. The secret garden fascination. The early years.

Not far from where I grew up, there was a place - the Muttontown Preserve. Mostly touted for hiking, it had an ace in its pocket. An estate with walled gardens - left behind to just become part of the woods that surrounded it. You had to hike in to see it. And I did. Often.

This wasn't just any old estate. Knollwood was a true Long Island Gold Coast behemoth. A 60-room castle by some accounts. Built to flaunt and exhibit all the grand wealth of the time. It was originally built for Wall Street tycoon Charles Hudson around 1907 and then bought by King Zog of Albania. Demolished in the 1950s - its remnants were left to crumble and be reabsorbed by the earth around it. And the effect of that overgrowth is forever etched into my mind.

On a shopping trip with my mom a little while back, we ran across garden pieces that were created to look aged and mossy. I'm kicking myself for not buying them. I haven't been able to really find anything similar since, except this piece - aptly called a Garden Relic.

Freshly uncovered from some long-forgotten estate ruins. Or so I would like to think.

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The top two photos are from a site - Long Island's Gold Coast. There are more photos of Knollwood at the Long Island Oddities website.