The Garden Club of Virginia Historic Restorations Project

The Garden Club of Virginia is an active association of 47 clubs. The purposes of The Garden Club of Virginia are to promote gardening among amateurs; to protect native trees, wildflowers and birds; to encourage conservation of natural resources; to promote civic planting; to encourage roadside beautification; and to aid in the restoration and preservation of Virginia's historic gardens.

This commitment to historic garden restoration dates practically from the inception of the club in the 1920s. Through the efforts of its Restoration Committee, over 40 such projects have been undertaken since 1924, the records for most of which may now be found in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society.

Selections from those records are presented here to allow students of historic gardens to trace the development and contributions of the club's efforts in Virginia. Its Restoration Committee set high standards for the selection of sites, research on specific gardens and gardening history, restoration and preservation activities, and long-term commitment to garden care and maintenance.

Photographic images

Please note that photographic images featured on these web pages show historic properties at various stages of restoration, but do not necessarily represent the landscapes as they appear today. The collection was received in 1997 from The Garden Club of Virginia and accession records bear that year date. The photographs themselves were taken at various times between the 1920s and the 1990s, although exact dates are often difficult to ascertain.

Resources

For more information on The Garden Club of Virginia and its various programs, including its annual flower shows and annual Historic Garden Week, visit www.gcvirginia.org.

In addition to the historic properties featured on this site, The Garden Club of Virginia has restored landscapes at many others including the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, Historic St. Luke’s Church, Hollins University, Lee Hall, Moses Myers House, and Poplar Forest. For the complete list of restorations, please visit http://www.gcvirginia.org/restorations.cfm.

For additional information on the first twenty-three of The Garden Club's restoration projects, see Dorothy Hunt Williams, Historic Virginia Gardens: Preservations by The Garden Club of Virginia (Charlottesville, The University Press of Virginia, 1975).

For information on The Garden Club of Virginia’s more recent restorations, see Margaret Page Bemiss, Historic Virginia Gardens: Preservation Work of The Garden Club of Virginia, 1975-2007 (Charlottesville, The University of Virginia Press, 2009). 

To access the descriptive records of the Garden Club's Restoration Committee papers at the Virginia Historical Society, search the online catalog.